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 burst into a fit of laughter. 'You fancy,' says he, 'that you are very polite, but you are much mistaken. That lady had rather be a Daphne drawn by me, than a Sacharissa by any other pencil.' She confirmed what he had said with great earnestness, so that I had no other method of retrieving my error, than by whispering in her ear, as I was conducting her down stairs to dinner, that indeed I found        'Her hand as dry and cold as lead!'"      —Remarks on the Life of Swift, Lond., 1752, p. 126. 

      Death went upon a solemn day At Pluto's hall his court to pay; The phantom having humbly kiss'd His grisly monarch's sooty fist, Presented him the weekly bills Of doctors, fevers, plagues, and pills. Pluto, observing since the peace The burial article decrease, And vex'd to see affairs miscarry, Declared in council Death must marry; Vow'd he no longer could support Old bachelors about his court; The interest of his realm had need      

 Prev. P 48/284 next