But, lest we should for honour take The drunken quarrels of a rake, Or think it seated in a scar, Or on a proud triumphal car, Or in the payment of a debt, We lose with sharpers at piquet; Or, when a whore in her vocation, Keeps punctual to an assignation; Or that on which his lordship swears, When vulgar knaves would lose their ears: Let Stella's fair example preach A lesson she alone can teach. In points of honour to be tried, All passions must be laid aside; Ask no advice, but think alone, Suppose the question not your own; How shall I act? is not the case, But how would Brutus in my place; In such a cause would Cato bleed; And how would Socrates proceed? Drive all objections from your mind, Else you relapse to human kind; Ambition, avarice, and lust, And factious rage, and breach of trust, And flattery tipped with nauseous fleer, And guilt and shame, and servile fear, Envy, and cruelty, and pride, Will in your tainted heart preside. Heroes and heroines of old, By honour only were enrolled Among their brethren in the skies, To which (though late) shall Stella rise. Ten thousand oaths upon record Are not so sacred as her word; The world shall in its atoms end Ere Stella can deceive a friend. By honour seated in her breast, She still determines what is best; What indignation in her mind, Against enslavers of mankind! Base kings and ministers of state, Eternal objects of her hate. She thinks that Nature ne'er designed, Courage to man alone confined; Can cowardice her sex adorn, Which most exposes ours to scorn; She wonders where the charm appears In Florimel's affected fears; For Stella never learned the art At proper times to scream and start; Nor calls up all the house at night, And swears she saw a thing in white. Doll never flies to cut her lace, Or throw cold water in her face, Because she heard a sudden drum, Or found an earwig in a plum. Her hearers are amazed from whence Proceeds that fund of wit and sense; Which, though her modesty would shroud, Breaks like the sun behind a cloud, While gracefulness its art conceals, And yet through every motion steals. Say, Stella, was Prometheus blind, And forming you, mistook your kind? No; 'twas for you alone he stole The fire that forms a manly soul; Then, to complete it every way, He moulded it with female clay, To that you owe the nobler flame, To this, the beauty of your frame.