For if to Michaelmas you stay,
The new-born flesh will melt away;
The 'squire in scorn will fly the house
For better game, and look for grouse;
But here, before the frost can mar it,
We'll make it firm with beef and claret.
STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY. 1724-5.
AS, when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say, she's past her dancing days;
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
Your annual bard had rather chose
To celebrate your birth in prose:
Yet merry folks, who want by chance
A pair to make a country dance,
Call the old housekeeper, and get her
To till a place, for want of better;
While Sheridan is off the hooks,
And friend Delany at his books,
That Stella may avoid disgrace,
Once more the dean supplies their place.
Beauty and wit, too sad a truth!
Have always been confin'd to youth;
The god of wit and beauty's queen,
He twenty-one, and she fifteen.
No poet ever sweetly sung,
Unless he were, like Phœbus, young;
Nor ever nymph inspir'd to rhyme,
Unless, like Venus, in her prime.
