Stella's Birth-Day March 13, 1726-7

This day, whate'er the Fates decree,     Shall still be kept with joy by me:     This day then let us not be told,     That you are sick, and I grown old;     Nor think on our approaching ills,     And talk of spectacles and pills;     To-morrow will be time enough     To hear such mortifying stuff.     Yet, since from reason may be brought     A better and more pleasing thought,     Which can, in spite of all decays,     Support a few remaining days;     From not the gravest of divines     Accept for once some serious lines.         Although we now can form no more     Long schemes of life, as heretofore;     Yet you, while time is running fast,     Can look with joy on what is past.         Were future happiness and pain     A mere contrivance of the brain;     As atheists argue, to entice     And fit their proselytes for vice;     (The only comfort they propose,     To have companions in their woes;)     Grant this the case; yet sure 'tis hard     That virtue, styled its own reward,     And by all sages understood     To be the chief of human good,     Should acting die; nor leave behind     Some lasting pleasure in the mind,     Which, by remembrance, will assuage     Grief, sickness, poverty, and age;     And strongly shoot a radiant dart     To shine through life's declining part.         Say, Stella, feel you no content,     Reflecting on a life well spent?     Your skilful hand employ'd to save     Despairing wretches from the grave;     And then supporting with your store     Those whom you dragg'd from death before?     So Providence on mortals waits,     Preserving what it first creates.     Your generous boldness to defend     An innocent and absent friend;     That courage which can make you just     To merit humbled in the dust;     The detestation you express     For vice in all its glittering dress;     That patience under torturing pain,     Where stubborn stoics would complain:     Must these like empty shadows pass,     Or forms reflected from a glass?     Or mere chimeras in the mind,     That fly, and leave no marks behind?     Does not the body thrive and grow     By food of twenty years ago?     And, had it not been still supplied,     It must a thousand times have died.     Then who with reason can maintain     That no effects of food remain?     And is not virtue in mankind     The nutriment that feeds the mind;     Upheld by each good action past,     And still continued by the last?     Then, who with reason can pretend     That all effects of virtue end?         Believe me, Stella, when you show     That true contempt for things below,     Nor prize your life for other ends,     Than merely to oblige your friends;     Your former actions claim their part,     And join to fortify your heart.     For Virtue, in her daily race,     Like Janus, bears a double face;     Looks back with joy where she has gone     And therefore goes with courage on:     She at your sickly couch will wait,     And guide you to a better state.         O then, whatever Heaven intends,     Take pity on your pitying friends!     Nor let your ills affect your mind,     To fancy they can be unkind.     Me, surely me, you ought to spare,     Who gladly would your suffering share;     Or give my scrap of life to you,     And think it far beneath your due;     You, to whose care so oft I owe     That I'm alive to tell you so.