BIRTH-DAY, 1721-2     

      While, Stella, to your lasting praise The Muse her annual tribute pays, While I assign myself a task Which you expect, but scorn to ask; If I perform this task with pain, Let me of partial fate complain; You every year the debt enlarge, I grow less equal to the charge:      In you each virtue brighter shines, But my poetic vein declines; My harp will soon in vain be strung, And all your virtues left unsung. For none among the upstart race Of poets dare assume my place; Your worth will be to them unknown, They must have Stellas of their own;      And thus, my stock of wit decay'd, I dying leave the debt unpaid, Unless Delany, as my heir, Will answer for the whole arrear. 

  

  

       ON THE GREAT BURIED BOTTLE BY DR. DELANY     

      Amphora, quae moestum linquis, laetumque revises Arentem dominum, sit tibi terra levis. Tu quoque depositum serves, neve opprime, marmor; Amphora non meruit tam pretiosa mori. 

  

  

       EPITAPH BY THE SAME     

      Hoc tumulata jacet proles Lenaea sepulchro, Immortale genus, nee peritura jacet; Quin oritura iterum, matris concreditur alvo:      Bis natum referunt te quoque, Bacche Pater. 

  

  

       STELLA'S BIRTH-DAY:     

      A GREAT BOTTLE OF WINE, LONG BURIED, BEING THAT DAY DUG UP. 1722-3 Resolv'd my annual verse to pay, By duty bound, on Stella's day, Furnish'd with paper, pens, and ink, I gravely sat me down to think:      I bit my nails, and scratch'd my head, But found my wit and fancy fled:      Or if, with more than usual pain, A thought came slowly from my brain, It cost me Lord knows how much time To shape it into sense and rhyme:      And, what was yet a greater curse, Long thinking made my fancy worse.        

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