Stella's Birthday March 13, 1727 Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABBCCDDEEFFFF GGHH IIFFFFJKLLMMNNOO PPQQGGFFRRSSFFIIFFMM TTUUIIMMHHRR TTFFOOFFVWXX FFMMYYZZTTThis 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 styl'd its own reward | K |
And by all sages understood | L |
To be the chief of human good | L |
Should acting die nor 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 employ'd to save | Q |
Despairing wretches from the grave | Q |
And then supporting with your store | G |
Those whom you dragg'd from death before | G |
So Providence on mortals waits | F |
Preserving what it first creates | F |
Your gen'rous 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 glitt'ring dress | F |
That patience under 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 chim aelig ras 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 |
Looks 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 suff'rings 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
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