Science of words, once jargon of the schools,
The plague of wise men, and the boast of fools,
Made easy now and useful in your rules!
Where wit and humour equally combine,
Our mirth at once to raise and to refine,
Till now not half the worth of sounds we knew,
Their virtual value was reserv'd for you.
To trace their various mazes, and set forth
Their hidden force, and multiply their worth;
For if t'express one sense our words we choose,
A double meaning is of double use.
Hail sacred Art! by what mysterious name
Shall I adore thee, various, and the same?
The Muses' Proteus, skill'd with grateful change,
Through all the pleasing forms of wit to range
In quick succession, yet retain through all
Some faint resemblance of th' original.
Hail, fairest offspring of prodigious birth, At once the parent and the child of Mirth! With Chloe's charms thy airy form can vie, And with thy smiles as many thousands die; The pleasing pain through all their vitals thrills, With subtle force, and tickles as it kills. Thee too, like her, the dying swains pursue, As gay, as careless, as inconstant too; To raise yet more thy merit and thy fame, The Cyprian Goddess glories in thy name, Pleas'd to be thought the laughter-loving dame. Nor less thy praise, nor less thy power to wound, Thou lovely, fleeting, image of a sound.
ON HIS BIRTHDAY, NOV. 30, 1721.
ST. Patrick's Dean, your country's pride,
My early and my only guide,
Let me among the rest attend,
Your pupil and your humble friend,
To celebrate in female strains
The day that paid your mother's pains;
Descend to take that tribute due
In gratitude alone to you.
When men began to call me fair,
You interpos'd your timely care;
You early taught me to despise
The ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;
Show'd where my judgment was misplac'd;
Refin'd my fancy and my taste.
Behold that beauty just decay'd,
Invoking art to nature's aid:
Forsook by her admiring train,
She spreads her tatter'd nets in vain ;
Short was her part upon the stage:
Went smoothly on for half a page;
Her bloom was gone, she wanted art,
As the scene chang'd, to change her part;
She, whom no lover could resist,
Before the second act was hiss'd.
Such is the fate of female race
With no endowments but a face;
Before the thirtieth year of life,
A maid forlorn, or hated wife.
Stella to you, her tutor, owes
That she has ne'er resembled those:
Nor was a burden to mankind
With half her course of years behind.
You taught how I might youth prolong,
By knowing what was right and wrong;
How from my heart to bring supplies
Of lustre to my fading eyes;
How soon a beauteous mind repairs
The loss of chang'd or falling hairs;
How wit and virtue from within
Send out a smoothness o'er the skin:
Your lectures could my fancy fix,
And I can please at thirty-six.
The sight of Chloe at fifteen
Coquetting, gives not me the spleen ;
The idol now of every fool
Till time shall make their passions cool;
Then tumbling down Time's steepy hill,
While Stella holds her station still.
O! turn your precepts into laws,
Redeem the women's ruin'd cause.
Retrieve lost empire to our sex,
That men may bow their rebel necks.
Long be the day that gave you birth
Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth;
Late dying may you cast a shred
Of your rich mantle o'er my head;
To bear with dignity my sorrow,
One day alone, then die to morrow
ON HER BIRTHDAY, 1721-2.
WHILE, Stella, to your lasting praise
The Muse her annual tribute pays,
While I assign myself a task
Which you expect, but scorn to ask ;
If I perform this task with pain,
Let me of partial fate complain;
You every year the debt enlarge,
I grow less equal to the charge:
In you
each virtue brighter shines,
But my poetic vein declines;
My harp will soon in vain be strung,
And all your virtues left unsung.
For none among the upstart racë
poets
dare assume my place;
Your worth will be to them unknown,
They must have Stellas of their own;
And thus, my stock of wit decay'd,
I dying leave the debt unpaid,
Unless Delany, as my heir,
Will answer for the whole, arrear.
ON THE GREAT BURIED BOTTLE.
AMPHORA, que mæstum linquis, lætumque
Arentem dominum. sit tibi terra levis.
Tu quoque depositum serves, neve opprime, mar
HOC tumulata jacet proles Lenæa sepulchro,
Immortale genus, nec peritura jacet;
Quin oritura iterum, matris concreditur alvo;
Bis natum referunt te quoque, Bacche Pater.
A GREAT BOTTLE OF WINE, LONG BURIED, BEING THAT DAY DUG UP. 1722-3.
RESOLV'D my annual verse to pay,
By duty bound, on Stella's day,
Furnish'd with paper, pens, and ink,
I gravely sat me down to think :
I bit my nails, and scratch'd
my head,
But found my wit and fancy fled :
Or, if with more than usual pain,
A thought came slowly from
my brain
It cost me lord knows how much time
To shape it into sense and rhyme:
And, what was yet a greater curse,
Long thinking made my fancy worse,
Forsaken by th' inspiring Nine,
I waited at Apollo's shrine:
I told him what the world would say,
If Stella were unsung to day:
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