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 assign 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 assume 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 assur'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