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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;
Tomorrow 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 employed to
save
Despairing wretches from the grave;
And then
supporting with your store
Those whom you dragged
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 chimaeras 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
sufferings 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.
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