Stella's Birthday, March 13, 1726 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFFFGGHHII FFFFJKLLMMNNOOPPQQGG FFRRSSFFIIFFMMTTUUII MMHHRRTTFFOOFFVWXXFF MMYYZZTT| This day whate'er the Fates decree | A |
| Shall still be kept with joy by me | A |
| This day then let us not be told | B |
| That you are sick and I grown old | B |
| Nor think on our approaching ills | C |
| And talk of spectacles and pills | C |
| To morrow will be time enough | D |
| To hear such mortifying stuff | D |
| Yet since from reason may be brought | E |
| A better and more pleasing thought | E |
| Which can in spite of all decays | F |
| Support a few remaining days | F |
| From not the gravest of divines | F |
| Accept for once some serious lines | F |
| Although we now can form no more | G |
| Long schemes of life as heretofore | G |
| Yet you while time is running fast | H |
| Can look with joy on what is past | H |
| Were future happiness and pain | I |
| A mere contrivance of the brain | I |
| As Atheists argue to entice | F |
| And fit their proselytes for vice | F |
| The only comfort they propose | F |
| To have companions in their woes | F |
| Grant this the case yet sure 'tis hard | J |
| That virtue styled its own reward | K |
| And by all sages understood | L |
| To be the chief of human good | L |
| Should acting die or leave behind | M |
| Some lasting pleasure in the mind | M |
| Which by remembrance will assuage | N |
| Grief sickness poverty and age | N |
| And strongly shoot a radiant dart | O |
| To shine through life's declining part | O |
| Say Stella feel you no content | P |
| Reflecting on a life well spent | P |
| Your skilful hand employed to save | Q |
| Despairing wretches from the grave | Q |
| And then supporting with your store | G |
| Those whom you dragged from death before | G |
| So Providence on mortals waits | F |
| Preserving what it first creates | F |
| You generous boldness to defend | R |
| An innocent and absent friend | R |
| That courage which can make you just | S |
| To merit humbled in the dust | S |
| The detestation you express | F |
| For vice in all its glittering dress | F |
| That patience under to torturing pain | I |
| Where stubborn stoics would complain | I |
| Must these like empty shadows pass | F |
| Or forms reflected from a glass | F |
| Or mere chimaeras in the mind | M |
| That fly and leave no marks behind | M |
| Does not the body thrive and grow | T |
| By food of twenty years ago | T |
| And had it not been still supplied | U |
| It must a thousand times have died | U |
| Then who with reason can maintain | I |
| That no effects of food remain | I |
| And is not virtue in mankind | M |
| The nutriment that feeds the mind | M |
| Upheld by each good action past | H |
| And still continued by the last | H |
| Then who with reason can pretend | R |
| That all effects of virtue end | R |
| Believe me Stella when you show | T |
| That true contempt for things below | T |
| Nor prize your life for other ends | F |
| Than merely to oblige your friends | F |
| Your former actions claim their part | O |
| And join to fortify your heart | O |
| For virtue in her daily race | F |
| Like Janus bears a double face | F |
| Look back with joy where she has gone | V |
| And therefore goes with courage on | W |
| She at your sickly couch will wait | X |
| And guide you to a better state | X |
| O then whatever heav'n intends | F |
| Take pity on your pitying friends | F |
| Nor let your ills affect your mind | M |
| To fancy they can be unkind | M |
| Me surely me you ought to spare | Y |
| Who gladly would your sufferings share | Y |
| Or give my scrap of life to you | Z |
| And think it far beneath your due | Z |
| You to whose care so oft I owe | T |
| That I'm alive to tell you so | T |
Jonathan Swift
(1)
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