Should Solomon wise
      In majesty rise,
And show them his wit and his learning;
      They never would hear,
      But turn the deaf ear,
As a matter they had no concern in.

      You tell a good jest,
      And please all the rest;
Comes Dingley, and asks you, what was it? 
      And, curious to know,
      Away she will go
To seek an old rag in the closet.

[Footnote 1:  Dr. Swift’s housekeeper.]

TO STELLA

WRITTEN ON THE DAY OF HER BIRTH, MARCH 13, 1723-4, BUT NOT ON THE SUBJECT, WHEN I WAS SICK IN BED

Tormented with incessant pains,
Can I devise poetic strains? 
Time was, when I could yearly pay
My verse to Stella’s native day: 
But now unable grown to write,
I grieve she ever saw the light. 
Ungrateful! since to her I owe
That I these pains can undergo. 
She tends me like an humble slave;
And, when indecently I rave,
When out my brutish passions break,
With gall in every word I speak,
She with soft speech my anguish cheers,
Or melts my passions down with tears;
Although ’tis easy to descry
She wants assistance more than I;
Yet seems to feel my pains alone,
And is a stoic in her own. 
When, among scholars, can we find
So soft and yet so firm a mind? 
All accidents of life conspire
To raise up Stella’s virtue higher;
Or else to introduce the rest
Which had been latent in her breast. 
Her firmness who could e’er have known,
Had she not evils of her own? 
Her kindness who could ever guess,
Had not her friends been in distress? 
Whatever base returns you find
From me, dear Stella, still be kind. 
In your own heart you’ll reap the fruit,
Though I continue still a brute. 
But, when I once am out of pain,
I promise to be good again;
Meantime, your other juster friends
Shall for my follies make amends;
So may we long continue thus,
Admiring you, you pitying us.

VERSES BY STELLA

If it be true, celestial powers,
That you have form’d me fair,
And yet, in all my vainest hours,
My mind has been my care: 
Then, in return, I beg this grace,
As you were ever kind,
What envious Time takes from my face
Bestow upon my mind!

A RECEIPT TO RESTORE STELLA’S YOUTH. 1724-5

The Scottish hinds, too poor to house
In frosty nights their starving cows,
While not a blade of grass or hay
Appears from Michaelmas to May,
Must let their cattle range in vain
For food along the barren plain: 
Meagre and lank with fasting grown,
And nothing left but skin and bone;
Exposed to want, and wind, and weather,
They just keep life and soul together,
Till summer showers and evening’s dew