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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Stella's Birthday March 13, 1727</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This day, whate'er the Fates decree,<br> Shall still be kept with joy by me:<br> This day then let us not be told,<br> That you are sick, and I grown old;<br> Nor think on our approaching ills,<br> And talk of spectacles and pills.<br> To-morrow will be time enough<br> To hear such mortifying stuff.<br> Yet, since from reason may be brought<br> A better and more pleasing thought,<br> Which can, in spite of all decays,<br> Support a few remaining days:<br> From not the gravest of divines<br> Accept for once some serious lines.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Although we now can form no more<br> Long schemes of life, as heretofore;<br> Yet you, while time is running fast,<br> Can look with joy on what is past.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Were future happiness and pain<br> A mere contrivance of the brain,<br> As atheists argue, to entice<br> And fit their proselytes for vice;<br> (The only comfort they propose,<br> To have companions in their woes;)<br> Grant this the case; yet sure 'tis hard<br> That virtue, styl'd its own reward,<br> And by all sages understood<br> To be the chief of human good,<br> Should, acting, die, nor leave behind<br> Some lasting pleasure in the mind;<br> Which by remembrance will assuage<br> Grief, sickness, poverty, and age;<br> And strongly shoot a radiant dart<br> To shine through life's declining part.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Say, Stella, feel you no content,<br> Reflecting on a life well spent?<br> Your skilful hand employ'd to save<br> Despairing wretches from the grave;<br> And then supporting with your store<br> Those whom you dragg'd from death before?<br> So Providence on mortals waits,<br> Preserving what it first creates.<br> Your gen'rous boldness to defend<br> An innocent and absent friend;<br> That courage which can make you just<br> To merit humbled in the dust;<br> The detestation you express<br> For vice in all its glitt'ring dress;<br> That patience under torturing pain,<br> Where stubborn stoics would complain:<br> Must these like empty shadows pass,<br> Or forms reflected from a glass?<br> Or mere chimæras in the mind,<br> That fly, and leave no marks behind?<br> Does not the body thrive and grow<br> By food of twenty years ago?<br> And, had it not been still supplied,<br> It must a thousand times have died.<br> Then who with reason can maintain<br> That no effects of food remain?<br> And is not virtue in mankind<br> The nutriment that feeds the mind;<br> Upheld by each good action past,<br> And still continued by the last?<br> Then, who with reason can pretend<br> That all effects of virtue end?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> Believe me, Stella, when you show<br> That true contempt for things below,<br> Nor prize your life for other ends,<br> Than merely to oblige your friends;<br> Your former actions claim their part,<br> And join to fortify your heart.<br> For Virtue, in her daily race,<br> Like Janus, bears a double face;<br> Looks back with joy where she has gone<br> And therefore goes with courage on:<br> She at your sickly couch will wait,<br> And guide you to a better state.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=426406" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"> O then, whatever Heav'n intends,<br> Take pity on your pitying friends!<br> Nor let your ills affect your mind,<br> To fancy they can be unkind.<br> Me, surely me, you ought to spare,<br> Who gladly would your suff'rings share;<br> Or give my scrap of life to you,<br> And think it far beneath your due;<br> You, to whose care so oft I owe<br> That I'm alive to tell you so.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Jonathan+Swift">Jonathan Swift</a></strong></div>