While, Stella, to your lasting praise <br />The Muse her annual tribute pays, <br />While I assign myself a task <br />Which you expect, but scorn to ask; <br />If I perform this task with pain, <br />Let me of partial fate complain; <br />You every year the debt enlarge, <br />I grow less equal to the charge: <br />In you each virtue brighter shines, <br />But my poetic vein declines; <br />My harp will soon in vain be strung, <br />And all your virtues left unsung. <br />For none among the upstart race <br />Of poets dare assume my place; <br />Your worth will be to them unknown, <br />They must have Stellas of their own; <br />And thus, my stock of wit decay'd, <br />I dying leave the debt unpaid, <br />Unless Delany, as my heir, <br />Will answer for the whole arrear.<br /><br />Jonathan Swift<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-stella-on-her-birth-day-1721-2/
