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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=426408" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Stella's Birthday, March 13, 1726</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">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.<br>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.<br>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, styled its own reward,<br>And by all sages understood<br>To be the chief of human good,<br>Should acting, die, or 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.<br>Say, Stella, feel you no content,<br>Reflecting on a life well spent;<br>Your skilful hand employed to save<br>Despairing wretches from the grave;<br>And then supporting with your store,<br>Those whom you dragged from death before?<br>So Providence on mortals waits,<br>Preserving what it first creates,<br>You generous 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 glittering dress:<br>That patience under to 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 chimaeras 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?<br>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>Look 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.<br>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 sufferings 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.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Jonathan+Swift">Jonathan Swift</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=426408" data-title="Stella's Birthday, March 13, 1726 de Jonathan Swift" data-description="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 h..."></div>
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