The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D Volume Ii Part 3

Stella, when you these lines transcribe, Lest you should take them for a bribe, Resolved to mortify your pride, I'll here expose your weaker side.

Your spirits kindle to a flame, Moved by the lightest touch of blame; And when a friend in kindness tries To show you where your error lies, Conviction does but more incense; Perverseness is your whole defence; Truth, judgment, wit, give place to spite, Regardless both of wrong and right; Your virtues all suspended wait, Till time has open'd reason's gate; And, what is worse, your pa.s.sion bends Its force against your nearest friends, Which manners, decency, and pride, Have taught from you the world to hide; In vain; for see, your friend has brought To public light your only fault; And yet a fault we often find Mix'd in a n.o.ble, generous mind: And may compare to aetna's fire, Which, though with trembling, all admire; The heat that makes the summit glow, Enriching all the vales below.

Those who, in warmer climes, complain From Phoebus' rays they suffer pain, Must own that pain is largely paid By generous wines beneath a shade.

Yet, when I find your pa.s.sions rise, And anger sparkling in your eyes, I grieve those spirits should be spent, For n.o.bler ends by nature meant.

One pa.s.sion, with a different turn, Makes wit inflame, or anger burn: So the sun's heat, with different powers, Ripens the grape, the liquor sours: Thus Ajax, when with rage possest, By Pallas breathed into his breast, His valour would no more employ, Which might alone have conquer'd Troy; But, blinded by resentment, seeks For vengeance on his friends the Greeks.

You think this turbulence of blood From stagnating preserves the flood, Which, thus fermenting by degrees, Exalts the spirits, sinks the lees.

Stella, for once you reason wrong; For, should this ferment last too long, By time subsiding, you may find Nothing but acid left behind; From pa.s.sion you may then be freed, When peevishness and spleen succeed.

Say, Stella, when you copy next, Will you keep strictly to the text?

Dare you let these reproaches stand, And to your failing set your hand?

Or, if these lines your anger fire, Shall they in baser flames expire?

Whene'er they burn, if burn they must, They'll prove my accusation just.

[Footnote 1: At Bridewell; see vol. i, "A Beautiful Young Nymph," at p. 201.--_W. E. B_.]

[Footnote 3: A cant word for a rhyme.--_W. E. B._]

TO STELLA VISITING ME IN MY SICKNESS 1720

Pallas, observing Stella's wit Was more than for her s.e.x was fit, And that her beauty, soon or late, Might breed confusion in the state, In high concern for human kind, Fix'd honour in her infant mind.

But (not in wrangling to engage With such a stupid, vicious age) If honour I would here define, It answers faith in things divine.

As natural life the body warms, And, scholars teach, the soul informs, So honour animates the whole, And is the spirit of the soul.

Those numerous virtues which the tribe Of tedious moralists describe, And by such various t.i.tles call, True honour comprehends them all.

Let melancholy rule supreme, Choler preside, or blood, or phlegm, It makes no difference in the case, Nor is complexion honour's place.

But, lest we should for honour take The drunken quarrels of a rake: Or think it seated in a scar, Or on a proud triumphal car; Or in the payment of a debt We lose with sharpers at piquet; Or when a wh.o.r.e, in her vocation, Keeps punctual to an a.s.signation; Or that on which his lordship swears, When vulgar knaves would lose their ears; Let Stella's fair example preach A lesson she alone can teach.

In points of honour to be tried, All pa.s.sions must be laid aside: Ask no advice, but think alone; Suppose the question not your own.

How shall I act, is not the case; But how would Brutus in my place?

In such a case would Cato bleed?

And how would Socrates proceed?

Drive all objections from your mind, Else you relapse to human kind: Ambition, avarice, and l.u.s.t, A factious rage, and breach of trust, And flattery tipt with nauseous fleer, And guilty shame, and servile fear, Envy, and cruelty, and pride, Will in your tainted heart preside.

Heroes and heroines of old, By honour only were enroll'd Among their brethren in the skies, To which (though late) shall Stella rise.

Ten thousand oaths upon record Are not so sacred as her word: The world shall in its atoms end, Ere Stella can deceive a friend.

By honour seated in her breast She still determines what is best: What indignation in her mind Against enslavers of mankind!

Base kings, and ministers of state, Eternal objects of her hate!

She thinks that nature ne'er design'd Courage to man alone confined.

Can cowardice her s.e.x adorn, Which most exposes ours to scorn?

She wonders where the charm appears In Florimel's affected fears; For Stella never learn'd the art At proper times to scream and start; Nor calls up all the house at night, And swears she saw a thing in white.

Doll never flies to cut her lace, Or throw cold water in her face, Because she heard a sudden drum, Or found an earwig in a plum.

Her hearers are amazed from whence Proceeds that fund of wit and sense; Which, though her modesty would shroud, Breaks like the sun behind a cloud; While gracefulness its art conceals, And yet through every motion steals.

Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind, And, forming you, mistook your kind?

No; 'twas for you alone he stole The fire that forms a manly soul; Then, to complete it every way, He moulded it with female clay: To that you owe the n.o.bler flame, To this the beauty of your frame.

How would Ingrat.i.tude delight, And how would Censure glut her spite, If I should Stella's kindness hide In silence, or forget with pride!

When on my sickly couch I lay, Impatient both of night and day, Lamenting in unmanly strains, Call'd every power to ease my pains; Then Stella ran to my relief, With cheerful face and inward grief; And, though by Heaven's severe decree She suffers hourly more than me, No cruel master could require, From slaves employ'd for daily hire, What Stella, by her friendship warm'd With vigour and delight perform'd: My sinking spirits now supplies With cordials in her hands and eyes: Now with a soft and silent tread Unheard she moves about my bed.

I see her taste each nauseous draught, And so obligingly am caught; I bless the hand from whence they came, Nor dare distort my face for shame.

Best pattern of true friends! beware; You pay too dearly for your care, If, while your tenderness secures My life, it must endanger yours; For such a fool was never found, Who pull'd a palace to the ground, Only to have the ruins made Materials for a house decay'd.

STELLA TO DR. SWIFT ON HIS BIRTH-DAY, 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 grat.i.tude alone to you.

When men began to call me fair, You interposed your timely care: You early taught me to despise The ogling of a c.o.xcomb's eyes; Show'd where my judgment was misplaced; Refined 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 changed, 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 l.u.s.tre to my fading eyes; How soon a beauteous mind repairs The loss of changed 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 pa.s.sions 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 s.e.x, 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.

TO STELLA ON HER BIRTH-DAY, 1721-2

While, Stella, to your lasting praise The Muse her annual tribute pays, While I a.s.sign 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 race Of poets dare a.s.sume 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 BY DR. DELANY

Amphora, quae moestum linquis, laetumque revises Arentem dominum, sit tibi terra levis.

Tu quoque depositum serves, neve opprime, marmor; Amphora non meruit tam pretiosa mori.

EPITAPH BY THE SAME

Hoc tumulata jacet proles Lenaea sepulchro, Immortale genus, nee peritura jacet; Quin oritura iterum, matris concreditur alvo: Bis natum referunt te quoque, Bacche Pater.

STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY: 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: How I should hide my head for shame, When both the Jacks and Robin came; How Ford would frown, how Jim would leer, How Sheridan the rogue would sneer, And swear it does not always follow, That _semel'n anno ridet Apollo_.

I have a.s.sur'd them twenty times, That Phoebus help'd me in my rhymes; Phoebus inspired me from above, And he and I were hand and glove.

But, finding me so dull and dry since, They'll call it all poetic license; And when I brag of aid divine, Think Eusden's[1] right as good as mine.

Nor do I ask for Stella's sake; 'Tis my own credit lies at stake: And Stella will be sung, while I Can only be a stander by.