Again the verdant glebe renew;
And, as the vegetables rise,
The famish’d cow her want supplies;
Without an ounce of last year’s flesh;
Whate’er she gains is young and fresh;
Grows plump and round, and full of mettle,
As rising from Medea’s [1] kettle. 
With youth and beauty to enchant
Europa’s[2] counterfeit gallant. 
  Why, Stella, should you knit your brow,
If I compare you to a cow? 
’Tis just the case; for you have fasted
So long, till all your flesh is wasted;
And must against the warmer days
Be sent to Quilca down to graze;
Where mirth, and exercise, and air,
Will soon your appetite repair: 
The nutriment will from within,
Round all your body, plump your skin;
Will agitate the lazy flood,
And fill your veins with sprightly blood. 
Nor flesh nor blood will be the same
Nor aught of Stella but the name: 
For what was ever understood,
By human kind, but flesh and blood? 
And if your flesh and blood be new,
You’ll be no more the former you;
But for a blooming nymph will pass,
Just fifteen, coming summer’s grass,
Your jetty locks with garlands crown’d: 
While all the squires for nine miles round,
Attended by a brace of curs,
With jockey boots and silver spurs,
No less than justices o’ quorum,
Their cow-boys bearing cloaks before ’em,
Shall leave deciding broken pates,
To kiss your steps at Quilca gates. 
But, lest you should my skill disgrace,
Come back before you’re out of case;
For if to Michaelmas you stay,
The new-born flesh will melt away;
The ’squires 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.

[Footnote 1:  The celebrated sorceress, daughter of AEetes, King of Colchis, who assisted Jason in obtaining possession of the Golden Fleece.—­W.  E. B.]

[Footnote 2:  Carried off by Jupiter under the form of a bull.  Ovid, “Met.” ii, 836.]

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 fill 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 confined 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 Phoebus, young;
Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,
Unless, like Venus, in her prime.