So Providence on mortals waits,
Preserving what it first creates. 
Your generous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend;
That courage which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust;
The detestation you express
For vice in all its glittering dress;
That patience under torturing pain,
Where stubborn stoics would complain: 
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass? 
Or mere chimeras in the mind,
That fly, and leave no marks behind? 
Does not the body thrive and grow
By food of twenty years ago? 
And, had it not been still supplied,
It must a thousand times have died. 
Then who with reason can maintain
That no effects of food remain? 
And is not virtue in mankind
The nutriment that feeds the mind;
Upheld by each good action past,
And still continued by the last? 
Then, who with reason can pretend
That all effects of virtue end? 
  Believe me, Stella, when you show
That true contempt for things below,
Nor prize your life for other ends,
Than merely to oblige your friends;
Your former actions claim their part,
And join to fortify your heart. 
For Virtue, in her daily race,
Like Janus, bears a double face;
Looks back with joy where she has gone
And therefore goes with courage on: 
She at your sickly couch will wait,
And guide you to a better state. 
  O then, whatever Heaven intends,
Take pity on your pitying friends! 
Nor let your ills affect your mind,
To fancy they can be unkind. 
Me, surely me, you ought to spare,
Who gladly would your suffering share;
Or give my scrap of life to you,
And think it far beneath your due;
You, to whose care so oft I owe
That I’m alive to tell you so.

DEATH AND DAPHNE

TO AN AGREEABLE YOUNG LADY, BUT EXTREMELY LEAN. 1730

Lord Orrery gives us the following curious anecdote respecting this poem: 

“I have just now cast my eye over a poem called ‘Death and Daphne,’ which makes me recollect an odd incident, relating to that nymph.  Swift, soon after our acquaintance, introduced me to her as to one of his female favourites.  I had scarce been half an hour in her company, before she asked me if I had seen the Dean’s poem upon ‘Death and Daphne.’  As I told her I had not, she immediately unlocked a cabinet, and, bringing out the manuscript, read it to me with a seeming satisfaction, of which, at that time, I doubted the sincerity.  While she was reading, the Dean was perpetually correcting her for bad pronunciation, and for placing a wrong emphasis upon particular words.  As soon as she had gone through the composition, she assured me, smilingly, that the portrait of Daphne was drawn for herself.  I begged to be excused from believing it; and protested that I could not see one feature that had the least resemblance; but the Dean immediately