Stella to Dr. Swift on His Birth-Day, Nov. 30, 1721

St. Patrick's Dean, your country's pride,My early and my only guide,Let me among the rest attend,Your pupil and your humble friend,To celebrate in female strainsThe day that paid your mother's pains;Descend to take that tribute dueIn gratitude alone to you.When men began to call me fair,You interposed your timely care:You early taught me to despiseThe ogling of a coxcomb's eyes;Show'd where my judgment was misplaced;Refined my fancy and my taste.Behold that beauty just decay'd,Invoking art to nature's aid:Forsook by her admiring train,She spreads her tatter'd nets in vain;Short was her part upon the stage;Went smoothly on for half a page;Her bloom was gone, she wanted art,As the scene changed, to change her part;She, whom no lover could resist,Before the second act was hiss'd.Such is the fate of female raceWith no endowments but a face;Before the thirtieth year of life,A maid forlorn, or hated wife.Stella to you, her tutor, owesThat she has ne'er resembled those:Nor was a burden to mankindWith half her course of years behind.You taught how I might youth prolong,By knowing what was right and wrong;How from my heart to bring suppliesOf lustre to my fading eyes;How soon a beauteous mind repairsThe loss of changed or falling hairs;How wit and virtue from withinSend out a smoothness o'er the skin:Your lectures could my fancy fix,And I can please at thirty-six.The sight of Chloe at fifteen,Coquetting, gives not me the spleen;The idol now of every foolTill time shall make their passions cool;Then tumbling down Time's steepy hill,While Stella holds her station still.O! turn your precepts into laws,Redeem the women's ruin'd cause,Retrieve lost empire to our sex,That men may bow their rebel necks.Long be the day that gave you birthSacred to friendship, wit, and mirth;Late dying may you cast a shredOf your rich mantle o'er my head;To bear with dignity my sorrow,One day alone, then die to-morrow.