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Title: The art of preserving health: A poem

Author: John Armstrong

Release date: March 20, 2023 [eBook #70326]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: A. Millar, 1744

Credits: Tim Lindell, Krista Zaleski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF PRESERVING HEALTH: A POEM ***






  THE

  ART

  OF PRESERVING

  HEALTH:

  A

  POEM.

  [Illustration]


  _LONDON_:
  Printed for A. MILLAR, opposite to _Katharine-Street_ in the _Strand_.

  MDCCXLIV.

  [Price Four Shillings sewed.]




THE

ART

OF PRESERVING

HEALTH.




BOOK I.

AIR.


  Daughter of Pæon, queen of every joy,
  HYGEIA[1]; whose indulgent smile sustains
  The various race luxuriant nature pours,
  And on th’ immortal essences bestows
  Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend!                               5
  Thou, chearful guardian of the rolling year,
  Whether thou wanton’st on the western gale,
  Or shak’st the rigid pinions of the north,
  Diffusest life and vigour thro’ the tracts
  Of air, thro’ earth, and ocean’s deep domain.                       10
  When thro’ the blue serenity of heav’n
  Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host
  Of pain and sickness, squallid and deform’d,
  Confounded sink into the loathsom gloom,
  Where in deep Erebus involv’d the fiends                            15
  Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death,
  Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe,
  Swarm thro’ the shuddering air: whatever plagues
  Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings
  Rise from the putrid watry element,                                 20
  The damp waste forest, motionless and rank,
  That smothers earth and all the breathless winds,
  Or the vile carnage of th’ inhuman field;
  Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south;
  Whatever ills th’ extremes or sudden change                         25
  Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce;
  They fly thy pure effulgence: they, and all
  The secret poisons of avenging heaven,
  And all the pale tribes halting in the train
  Of vice and heedless pleasure: or if aught                          30
  The comet’s glare amid the burning sky,
  Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin’d,
  Portend disastrous to the vital world;
  Thy salutary power averts their rage,
  Averts the general bane: and but for thee                           35
  Nature would sicken, nature soon would die.

    Without thy chearful active energy
  No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings,
  No more the maids of Helicon delight.
  Come then with me, O Goddess heavenly-gay!                          40
  Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow,
  And let it wisely teach thy wholesom laws:
  “How best the fickle fabric to support
  “Of mortal man; in healthful body how
  “A healthful mind the longest to maintain.”                         45
  ’Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse
  The best, and those of most extensive use;
  Harder in clear and animated song
  Dry philosophic precepts to convey.
  Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace                           50
  Of nature, and with daring steps proceed
  Thro’ paths the muses never trod before.

    Nor should I wander doubtful of my way,
  Had I the lights of that sagacious mind
  Which taught to check the pestilential fire,                        55
  And quel the dreaded Python of the Nile.
  O Thou belov’d by all the graceful arts,
  Thou long the fav’rite of the healing powers,
  Indulge, O MEAD! a well-design’d essay,
  Howe’er imperfect: and permit that I                                60
  My little knowledge with my country share,
  Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock,
  And with new graces dignify the theme.

    YE who amid this feverish world would wear
  A body free of pain, of cares a mind;                               65
  Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air;
  Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke
  And volatile corruption, from the dead,
  The dying, sickning, and the living world
  Exhal’d, to sully heaven’s transparent dome                         70
  With dim mortality. It is not air
  That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine,
  Sated with exhalations rank and fell,
  The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw
  Of nature; when from shape and texture she                          75
  Relapses into fighting elements:
  It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass
  Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things.
  Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath,
  With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more                              80
  The solid frame than simple moisture can.
  Besides, immur’d in many a sullen bay
  That never felt the freshness of the breeze,
  This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows
  With sickly rest: and (tho’ the lungs abhor                         85
  To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)
  Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
  Roll’d from so many thundring chimneys, tame
  The putrid salts that overswarm the sky;
  This caustick venom would perhaps corrode                           90
  Those tender cells that draw the vital air,
  In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew’d;
  Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn
  In countless pores o’er all the pervious skin,
  Imbib’d, would poison the balsamic blood,                           95
  And rouse the heart to every fever’s rage.
  While yet you breathe, away! the rural wilds
  Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales,
  The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze
  That fans the ever undulating sky;                                 100
  A kindly sky! whose fost’ring power regales
  Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.
  Find then some woodland scene where nature smiles
  Benign, where all her honest children thrive.
  To us there wants not many a happy seat;                           105
  Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise
  We hardly fix, bewilder’d in our choice.
  See where enthron’d in adamantine state,
  Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits;
  There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove                       110
  Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where
  Broader she laves fair Richmond’s green retreats,
  (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise
  Rural or gay.) O! from the summer’s rage
  O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides                        115
  Umbrageous Ham! But if the busy town
  Attract thee still to toil for power or gold,
  Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess
  In Hampstead, courted by the western wind;
  Or Greenwich, waving o’er the winding flood;                       120
  Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds
  Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil’d.
  Green rise the Kentish hills in chearful air;
  But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads
  Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet.                   125
  For on a rustic throne of dewy turf,
  With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,
  Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend
  Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force
  Compress’d the slothful Naiad of the fens.                         130
  From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest,
  With feverish blasts subdues the sick’ning land:
  Cold tremors come, and mighty love of rest,
  Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains
  That sting the burden’d brows, fatigue the loins,                  135
  And rack the joints, and every torpid limb;
  Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats
  O’erflow; a short relief from former ills.
  Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine;
  The vigour sinks, the habit melts away;                            140
  The chearful, pure and animated bloom
  Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy
  Devour’d, in sallow melancholy clad.
  And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath,
  Resigns them to the furies of her train;                           145
  The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend
  Ting’d with her own accumulated gall.

    In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain
  Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake;
  Where many lazy muddy rivers flow:                                 150
  Nor for the wealth that all the Indies roll
  Fix near the marshy margin of the main.
  For from the humid soil, and watry reign,
  Eternal vapours rise; the spungy air
  For ever weeps; or, turgid with the weight                         155
  Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down.
  Skies such as these let every mortal shun
  Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout,
  Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh;
  Or any other injury that grows                                     160
  From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung,
  Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood
  In languid eddies loitering into phlegm.

      Yet not alone from humid skies we pine;
  For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven,                         165
  That winnows into dust the blasted downs,
  Bare and extended wide without a stream,
  Too fast imbibes th’ attenuated lymph
  Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales.
  The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay                          170
  Their flexible vibrations; or inflam’d,
  Their tender ever-moving structure thaws.
  Spoil’d of its limpid vehicle, the blood
  A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide
  That slow as Lethe wanders thro’ the veins,                        175
  Unactive in the services of life,
  Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro’
  The secret mazy channels of the brain.
  The melancholic fiend, (that worst despair
  Of physic) hence the rust-complexion’d man                         180
  Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain
  Too stretch’d a tone: And hence in climes adust
  So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves,
  And burning fevers glow with double rage.

      Fly, if you can, these violent extremes                        185
  Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry.
  But as the power of chusing is deny’d
  To half mankind, a further task ensues;
  How best to mitigate these fell extreams,
  How breathe unhurt the withering element,                          190
  Or hazy atmosphere: Tho’ custom moulds
  To every clime the soft Promethean clay;
  And he who first the fogs of Essex breath’d
  (So kind is native air) may in the fens
  Of Essex from inveterate ills revive                               195
  At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught.
  But if the raw and oozy heaven offend,
  Correct the soil, and dry the sources up
  Of watry exhalation; wide and deep
  Conduct your trenches thro’ the spouting bog;                      200
  Solicitous, with all your winding arts,
  Betray th’ unwilling lake into the stream;
  And weed the forest, and invoke the winds
  To break the toils where strangled vapours lie;
  Or thro’ the thickets send the crackling flames.                   205
  Mean time, at home with chearful fires dispel
  The humid air: And let your table smoke
  With solid roast or bak’d; or what the herds
  Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds
  Yield to the toilsom pleasures of the chase.                       210
  Generous your wine, the boast of rip’ning years,
  But frugal be your cups; the languid frame,
  Vapid and sunk from yesterday’s debauch,
  Shrinks from the cold embrace of watry heavens.
  But neither these, nor all Apollo’s arts,                          215
  Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky,
  Unless with exercise and manly toil
  You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood.
  The fat’ning clime let all the sons of ease
  Avoid; if indolence would wish to live.                            220
  Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year
  In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch
  The skin and lungs, and bake the thick’ning blood;
  Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat,
  Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air;                        225
  And wake the fountains from their secret beds,
  And into lakes dilate the running stream.
  Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool,
  The moist relaxing vegetable store
  Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied                         230
  By bleeding life, be gently wasted down,
  By soft decoction and a mellowing heat,
  To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass
  You chuse, tormented in the boiling wave;
  That thro’ the thirsty channels of the blood                       235
  A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow.
  The fragrant dairy from its cool recess
  Its nectar acid or benign will pour
  To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl
  Of keen Sherbet the fickle taste relieve.                          240
  For with the viscous blood the simple stream
  Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups
  Oft dissipate more moisture than they give.
  Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls
  His horrors o’er the world, thou may’st indulge                    245
  In feasts more genial, and impatient broach
  The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air
  Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts
  Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme.
  Steep’d in continual rains, or with raw fogs                       250
  Bedew’d, our seasons droop; incumbent still
  A ponderous heaven o’erwhelms the sinking soul.
  Lab’ring with storms in heapy mountains rise
  Th’ imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades
  Had left the dungeon of eternal night,                             255
  Till black with thunder all the south descends.
  Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge
  Our melting clime; except the baleful east
  Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks
  The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk                            260
  Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene.
  Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes
  This dismal change! The brooding elements
  Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath,
  Prepare some fierce exterminating plague?                          265
  Or is it fix’d in the Decrees above
  That lofty Albion melt into the main?
  Indulgent nature! O dissolve this gloom!
  Bind in eternal adamant the winds
  That drown or wither: Give the genial west                         270
  To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north:
  And may once more the circling seasons rule
  The year; not mix in every monstrous day.

      Mean time, the moist malignity to shun
  Of burthen’d skies; mark where the dry champain                    275
  Swells into chearful hills; where Marjoram
  And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air;
  And where the Cynorrhodon[2] with the rose
  For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil
  Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes.                         280
  There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep
  Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires.
  And let them see the winter morn arise,
  The summer evening blushing in the west;
  While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind                        285
  O’erhung, defends you from the blust’ring north,
  And bleak affliction of the peevish east.
  O! when the growling winds contend, and all
  The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm,
  To sink in warm repose, and hear the din                           290
  Howl o’er the steady battlements, delights
  Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.
  The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain
  Of waters rushing o’er the slippery rocks,
  Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest.                           295
  To please the fancy is no trifling good,
  Where health is studied; for whatever moves
  The mind with calm delight, promotes the just
  And natural movements of th’ harmonious frame.
  Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes                        300
  The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill,
  From vale to mountain, with incessant change
  Of purest element, refreshing still
  Your airy seat, and uninfected Gods.
  Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds                       305
  High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides
  Th’ etherial deep with endless billows laves.
  His purer mansion nor contagious years
  Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.

      But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain,                     310
  Involve my hill. And wheresoe’er you build;
  Whether on sun-burnt Epsom, or the plains
  Wash’d by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low,
  Or high Blackheath with wintry winds assail’d;
  Dry be your house: but airy more than warm.                        315
  Else every breath of ruder wind will strike
  Your tender body thro’ with rapid pains;
  Fierce coughs will teize you, hoarseness bind your voice,
  Or moist Gravedo load your aching brows.
  These to defy, and all the fates that dwell                        320
  In cloister’d air tainted with steaming life,
  Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms;
  And still at azure noontide may your dome
  At every window drink the liquid sky.

      Need we the sunny situation here,                              325
  And theatres open to the south, commend?
  Here, where the morning’s misty breath infests
  More than the torrid noon? How sickly grow,
  How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales
  That, circled round with the gigantic heap                         330
  Of mountains, never felt, nor never hope
  To feel, the genial vigor of the sun!
  While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames
  The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows
  The tender lily, languishingly sweet;                              335
  O’er every hedge the wanton woodbine roves,
  And autumn ripens in the summer’s ray.
  Nor less the warmer living tribes demand
  The fost’ring sun: whose energy divine
  Dwells not in mortal fire; whose generous heat                     340
  Glows thro’ the mass of grosser elements,
  And kindles into life the pond’rous spheres.
  Chear’d by thy kind invigorating warmth,
  We court thy beams, great majesty of day!
  If not the soul, the regent of this world,                         345
  First born of heaven, and only less than God!

[Illustration]




BOOK II.

DIET.


  Enough of air. A desart subject now,
  Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight.
  A barren waste, where not a garland grows
  To bind the muse’s brow; not even a proud
  Stupendous solitude frowns o’er the heath,                           5
  To rouse a noble horror in the soul:
  But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads
  Thro’ endless labyrinths the devious feet.
  Farewel, etherial fields! the humbler arts
  Of life; the table and the homely Gods,                             10
  Demand my song. Elysian gales adieu!

    The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow,
  The generous stream that waters every part,
  And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys
  To every particle that moves or lives;                              15
  This vital fluid, thro’ unnumber’d tubes
  Pour’d by the heart, and to the heart again
  Refunded; scourg’d for ever round and round,
  Enrag’d with heat and toil, at last forgets
  Its balmy nature; virulent and thin                                 20
  It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates
  Are open to its flight, it would destroy
  The parts it cherish’d and repair’d before.
  Besides, the flexible and tender tubes
  Melt in the mildest, most nectareous tide                           25
  That ripening nature rolls; as in the stream
  Its crumbling banks; but what the vital force
  Of plastic fluids hourly batters down,
  That very force, those plastic particles
  Rebuild: So mutable the state of man.                               30
  For this the watchful appetite was giv’n,
  Daily with fresh materials to repair
  This unavoidable expence of life,
  This necessary waste of flesh and blood.
  Hence the concoctive powers, with various art,                      35
  Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle;
  The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide
  To liquors, which thro’ finer arteries
  To different parts their winding course pursue;
  To try new changes, and new forms put on,                           40
  Or for the public, or some private use.

    Nothing so foreign but th’ athletic hind
  Can labour into blood. The hungry meal
  Alone he fears, or aliments too thin,
  By violent powers too easily subdu’d,                               45
  Too soon expell’d. His daily labour thaws,
  To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass
  That salt can harden, or the smoke of years;
  Nor does his gorge the rancid bacon rue,
  Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste                       50
  Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay
  Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste
  With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day!
  Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid
  The full repast; and let sagacious age                              55
  Grow wiser, lesson’d by the dropping teeth.

      Half subtiliz’d to chyle, the liquid food
  Readiest obeys th’ assimilating powers;
  And soon the tender vegetable mass
  Relents; and soon the young of those that tread                     60
  The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss,
  Or pathless sky. And if the Steer must fall,
  In youth and vigor glorious let him die;
  Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails,
  Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke.                             65
  Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease,
  Indulge the veteran Ox; but wiser thou,
  From the bleak mountain or the barren downs,
  Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed;
  A race of purer blood, with exercise                                70
  Refin’d and scanty fare: For, old or young,
  The stall’d are never healthy; nor the cramm’d.
  Not all the culinary arts can tame,
  To wholsome food, th’ abominable growth
  Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste                             75
  Rejects like bane such loathsome lusciousness.
  The languid stomach curses even the pure
  Delicious fat, and all the race of oil;
  For more the oily aliments relax
  Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph                           80
  (Fond to incorporate with all it meets)
  Coily they mix; and shun with slippery wiles
  The wooed embrace. Th’ irresoluble oil,
  So gentle late and blandishing, in floods
  Of rancid bile o’erflows: What tumults hence,                       85
  What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.
  Chuse leaner viands, ye of jovial make!
  Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life
  Your cumbrous clay; nor on th’ enfeebling down,
  Irresolute, protract the morning hours.                             90
  But let the man, whose bones are thinly clad,
  With chearful ease, and succulent repast
  Improve his slender habit. Each extreme
  From the blest mean of sanity departs.

      I could relate what table this demands,                         95
  Or that complexion; what the various powers
  Of various foods: But fifty years would roll,
  And fifty more, before the tale were done.
  Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange,
  Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display’d,                         100
  Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen;
  Which finds a poison in the food that most
  The temp’rature affects. There are, whose blood
  Impetuous rages thro’ the turgid veins,
  Who better bear the fiery fruits of Ind,                           105
  Than the moist Melon, or pale Cucumber.
  Of chilly nature others fly the board
  Supply’d with slaughter, and the vernal pow’rs
  For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore.
  Some even the generous nutriment detest                            110
  Which, in the shell, the sleeping Embryo rears.
  Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts
  Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:
  The balmy quintescence of every flower,
  And every grateful herb that decks the spring;                     115
  The fost’ring dew of tender sprouting life;
  The best reflection of declining age;
  The kind restorative of those who lie
  Half-dead and panting, from the doubtful strife
  Of nature struggling in the grasp of death.                        120
  Try all the bounties of this fertile globe,
  There is not such a salutary food,
  As suits with every stomach. But (except,
  Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl,
  And boil’d and bak’d, you hesitate by which                        125
  You sunk oppress’d, or whether not by all;)
  Taught by experience soon you may discern
  What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates
  That lull the sicken’d appetite too long;
  Or heave with feverish flushings all the face,                     130
  Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue;
  Or much diminish or too much increase
  Th’ expence which nature’s wise oeconomy,
  Without or waste or avarice, maintains.
  Such cates abjur’d, let prouling hunger loose,                     135
  And bid the curious palate roam at will;
  They scarce can err amid the various stores
  That burst the teeming entrails of the world.

      Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king
  Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives:                       140
  The tyger, form’d alike to cruel meals,
  Would at the manger starve: Of milder seeds,
  The generous horse to herbage and to grain
  Confines his wish; tho’ fabling Greece resound
  The Thracian steeds with human carnage wild.                       145
  Prompted by instinct’s never-erring power,
  Each creature knows its proper aliment;
  But man, th’ inhabitant of every clime,
  With all the commoners of nature feeds.
  Directed, bounded, by this pow’r within,                           150
  Their cravings are well-aim’d: Voluptous man
  Is by superior faculties misled;
  Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy.
  Sated with nature’s boons, what thousands seek,
  With dishes tortur’d from their native taste,                      155
  And mad variety, to spur beyond
  Its wiser will the jaded appetite!
  Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste;
  And know, that temperance is true luxury.
  Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim.                            160
  Dismiss your parasites, who praise for hire;
  And earn the fair esteem of honest men,
  Whose praise is fame. Form’d of such clay as yours,
  The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates.
  Even modest want may bless your hand unseen,                       165
  Tho’ hush’d in patient wretchedness at home.
  Is there no virgin, grac’d with every charm
  But that which binds the mercenary vow?
  No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom
  Unfoster’d sickens in the barren shade?                            170
  No worthy man, by fortune’s random blows,
  Or by a heart too generous and humane,
  Constrain’d to leave his happy natal seat,
  And sigh for wants more bitter than his own?
  There are, while human miseries abound,                            175
  A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
  Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
  Without one hour of sickness or disgust.

      But other ills th’ ambiguous feast pursue,
  Besides provoking the lascivious taste.                            180
  Such various foods, tho’ harmless each alone,
  Each other violate; and oft we see
  What strife is brew’d, and what pernicious bane,
  From combinations of innoxious things.
  Th’ unbounded taste I mean not to confine                          185
  To hermit’s diet, needlessly severe.
  But would you long the sweets of health enjoy,
  Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal
  Exhaust not half the bounties of the year,
  And of each realm. It matters not mean while                       190
  How much to morrow differ from to day;
  So far indulge: ’tis fit, besides, that man,
  To change obnoxious, be to change inur’d.
  But stay the curious appetite, and taste
  With caution fruits you never tried before.                        195
  For want of use the kindest aliment
  Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage
  Of poison to mild amity with life.

      So heav’n has form’d us to the general taste
  Of all its gifts; so custom has improv’d                           200
  This bent of nature; that few simple foods,
  Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield,
  But by excess offend. Beyond the sense
  Of light refection, at the genial board
  Indulge not often; nor protract the feast                          205
  To dull satiety; till soft and slow
  A drowzy death creeps on, th’ expansive soul
  Oppress’d, and smother’d the celestial fire.
  The stomach, urg’d beyond its active tone,
  Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues                                210
  The softest food: unfinish’d and deprav’d,
  The chyle, in all its future wand’rings, owns
  Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams
  So to be clear’d, but foulness will remain.
  To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt                           215
  Th’ unripen’d grape? Or what mechanic skill
  From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold?
  Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund
  Of plagues: but more immedicable ills
  Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows                          220
  How to disburden the too tumid veins,
  Even how to ripen the half-labour’d blood;
  But to unlock the elemental tubes,
  Collaps’d and shrunk with long inanity,
  And with balsamic nutriment repair                                 225
  The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid
  Old age grow green, and wear a second spring;
  Or the tall ash, long ravish’d from the soil,
  Thro’ wither’d veins imbibe the vernal dew.
  When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait                            230
  Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain:
  For the keen appetite will feast beyond
  What nature well can bear; and one extreme
  Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse.
  Too greedily th’ exhausted veins absorb                            235
  The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers
  Oft to th’ extinction of the vital flame.
  To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege
  And famine humbled, may this verse be borne;
  And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds,                     240
  Long toss’d and famish’d on the wintry main;
  The war shook off, or hospitable shore
  Attain’d, with temperance bear the shock of joy;
  Nor crown with festive rites th’ auspicious day:
  Such feast might prove more fatal than the waves,                  245
  Than war, or famine. While the vital fire
  Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on;
  But prudently foment the wandering spark
  With what the soonest feels its kindred touch:
  Be frugal ev’n of that: a little give                              250
  At first; that kindled, add a little more;
  Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame
  Reviv’d, with all its wonted vigor glows.

      But tho’ the two (the full and the jejune)
  Extremes have each their vice; it much avails                      255
  Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow
  From this to that: So nature learns to bear
  Whatever chance or headlong appetite
  May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues
  The cruder clods by sloth or luxury                                260
  Collected; and unloads the wheels of life.
  Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast
  Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lours;
  Then is a time to shun the tempting board,
  Were it your natal or your nuptial day.                            265
  Perhaps a fast so seasonable starves
  The latent seeds of woe, which rooted once
  Might cost you labour. But the day return’d
  Of festal luxury, the wise indulge
  Most in the tender vegetable breed:                                270
  Then chiefly when the summer’s beams inflame
  The brazen heavens; or angry Syrius sheds
  A feverish taint thro’ the still gulph of air.
  The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup
  From the fresh dairy-virgin’s liberal hand,                        275
  Will save your head from harm, tho’ round the world
  The dreaded Causos[3] roll his wasteful fires.
  Pale humid Winter loves the generous board.
  The meal more copious, and a warmer fare;
  And longs, with old wood and old wine, to cheer                    280
  His quaking heart. The seasons which divide
  Th’ empires of heat and cold; by neither claim’d.
  Influenc’d by both; a middle regimen
  Impose. Thro’ autumn’s languishing domain
  Descending, nature by degrees invites                              285
  To glowing luxury. But from the depth
  Of winter, when th’ invigorated year
  Emerges; when Favonius flush’d with love,
  Toyful and young, in every breeze descends
  More warm and wanton on his kindling bride;                        290
  Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks;
  And learn, with wise humanity, to check
  The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits
  A various offspring to th’ indulgent sky:
  Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand                        295
  The prone creation; yields what once suffic’d
  Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young;
  E’re yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seiz’d
  The human breast. Each rolling month matures
  The food that suits it most; so does each clime.                   300

      Far in the horrid realms of winter, where
  Th’ establish’d ocean heaps a monstrous waste
  Of shining rocks and mountains to the pole;
  There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants
  Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother,                         305
  Regards not. On the waste of iron fields,
  Untam’d, untractable, no harvests wave:
  Pomona hates them, and the clownish God
  Who tends the garden. In this frozen world
  Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal                        310
  Is earn’d with ease; for here the fruitful spawn
  Of Ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board
  With generous fare and luxury profuse.
  These are their bread, the only bread they know;
  These, and their willing slave the deer, that crops                315
  The shrubby herbage on their meager hills.
  Girt by the burning zone, not thus the south
  Her swarthy sons, in either Ind, maintains:
  Or thirsty Lybia; from whose fervid loins
  The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams                        320
  Th’ affrighted wilderness. The mountain herd,
  Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords;
  Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce,
  So perfect, so delicious, as the stores
  Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood                              325
  Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain
  Its tumid fervor and tempestuous course;
  Kind nature tempts not to such gifts as these.
  But here in livid ripeness melts the grape;
  Here, finish’d by invigorating suns,                               330
  Thro’ the green shade the golden Orange glows;
  Spontaneous here the turgid Melon yields
  A generous pulp; the Coco swells on high
  With milky riches; and in horrid mail
  The soft Ananas wraps its tender sweets.                           335
  Earth’s vaunted progeny: In ruder air
  Too coy to flourish, even to proud to live;
  Or hardly rais’d by artificial fire
  To vapid life. Here with a mother’s smile
  Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn.                              340
  Here buxom Ceres reigns: Th’ autumnal sea
  In boundless billows fluctuates o’er their plains.
  What suits the climate best, what suits the men,
  Nature profuses most, and most the taste
  Demands. The fountain, edg’d with racy wine                        345
  Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls.
  The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
  Supports in else intolerable air:
  While the cool Palm, the Plantain, and the grove
  That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage                              350
  The torrid hell that beams upon their heads.

      Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;
  Now let me wander thro’ your gelid reign.
  I burn to view th’ enthusiastic wilds
  By mortal else untrod. I hear the din                              355
  Of waters thundering o’er the ruin’d cliffs.
  With holy rev’rence I approach the rocks
  Whence glide the streams renown’d in ancient song.
  Here from the desart down the rumbling steep
  First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po                360
  In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
  A mighty flood to water half the East;
  And there, in Gothic solitude reclin’d,
  The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn.
  What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades                       365
  Enwarp these infant floods! Thro’ every nerve
  A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear
  Glides o’er my frame. The forest deepens round;
  And more gigantic still th’ impending trees
  Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.                  370
  Are these the confines of some fairy world?
  A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds
  What unknown nations? If indeed beyond
  Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,
  To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,                      375
  That subterraneous way? Propitious maids,
  Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
  This trembling ground. The task remains to sing
  Your gifts, (so Pæon, so the powers of health
  Command) to praise your chrystal element:                          380
  The chief ingredient in heaven’s various works;
  Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,
  Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
  The vehicle, the source, of nutriment
  And life, to all that vegitate or live.                            385

      O comfortable streams? With eager lips
  And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
  New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins.
  No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
  None warmer sought the sires of human-kind.                        390
  Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days
  Felt not th’ alternate fits of feverish mirth,
  And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas’d,
  They knew no pains but what the tender soul
  With pleasure yields to, and would ne’er forget.                   395
  Blest with divine immunity from ails,
  Long centuries they liv’d; their only fate
  Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.
  Oh! could those worthies from the world of Gods
  Return to visit their degenerate sons,                             400
  How would they scorn the joys of modern time,
  With all our art and toil improv’d to pain!
  Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury,
  And luxury on sloth begot disease.

      Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain            405
  The choice of water. Thus the Coan[4] sage
  Opin’d, and thus the learn’d of every school.
  What least of foreign principles partakes
  Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch
  Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air;                      410
  The most insipid; the most void of smell.
  Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides
  Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale
  For ever boil, alike of winter frosts
  And summer’s heat secure. The lucid stream,                        415
  O’er rocks resounding, or for many a mile
  Hurl’d down the pebbly channel, wholesome yields
  And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
  And half the mountains melt into the tide.
  Tho’ thirst were ne’er so resolute, avoid                          420
  The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods
  As fill from Lethe Belgia’s slow canals;
  (With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;
  Squalid with generation, and the birth
  Of little monsters;) till the power of fire                        425
  Has from profane embraces disengag’d
  The violated lymph. The virgin stream
  In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.

      Nothing like simple element dilutes
  The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow.                      430
  But where the stomach, indolently given,
  Toys with its duty, animate with wine
  Th’ insipid stream: Tho’ golden Ceres yields
  A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught;
  Perhaps more active. Wine unmix’d, and all                         435
  The gluey floods that from the vex’d abyss
  Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught,
  And furious with intoxicating fire;
  Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw’d
  Th’ embodied mass. You see what countless years,                   450
  Embalm’d in fiery quintescence of wine,
  The puny wonders of the reptile world,
  The tender rudiments of life, the slim
  Unrav’lings of minute anatomy,
  Maintain their texture, and unchang’d remain!                      455

      We curse not wine: The vile excess we blame;
  More fruitful, than th’ accumulated board,
  Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught
  Faster and surer swells the vital tide;
  And with more active poison, than the floods                       460
  Of grosser crudity convey, pervades
  The far-remote meanders of our frame.
  Ah! sly deceiver! Branded o’er and o’er,
  Yet still believ’d! Exulting o’er the wreck
  Of sober Vows! But the Parnassian maids                            465
  Another time perhaps shall sing the joys,
  The fatal charms, the many woes of wine;
  Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers.

    Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
  Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,                      470
  Rous’d by the rare debauch, subdues, expells
  The loitering crudities, that burthen life;
  And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
  Th’ obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
  Is full of chances, which by habit’s power                         475
  To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
  Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
  Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine
  To moisten well the thirsty suffrages;
  Say how, unseason’d to the midnight frays                          480
  Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend
  With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur’d?
  Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees:
  By slow degrees the liberal arts are won;
  And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth                      485
  The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
  In cups by well-inform’d experience found
  The least your bane; and only with your friends.
  There are sweet follies, frailties to be seen
  By friends alone, and men of generous minds.                       490

      Oh! seldom may the fated hours return
  Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste,
  Except when life declines, even sober cups.
  Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
  With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm,                     495
  The sapless habit daily to bedew,
  And give the hesitating wheels of life
  Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys;
  And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows,
  To squander the reliefs of age and pain?                           500

      What dext’rous thousands just within the goal
  Of wild debauch direct their nightly course!
  Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days,
  No morning admonitions shock the head.
  But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace,                        505
  And that incurable disease old age,
  In youthful bodies more severely felt,
  More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime:
  Except kind nature by some hasty blow
  Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate’er                    510
  Beyond its natural fervor hurries on
  The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl,
  High-season’d fare, or exercise to toil
  Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir’d life,
  And sows the temples with untimely snow.
  When life is new, the ductile fibres feel                          515
  The heart’s increasing force; and, day by day,
  The growth advances; till the larger tubes,
  Acquiring (from their elemental[5] veins,
  Condens’d to solid chords) a firmer tone,
  Sustain, and just sustain, th’ impetuous blood.                    520
  Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse
  And pressure, still the great destroy the small;
  Still with the ruins of the small grow strong.
  Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force
  Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes;                               525
  Its various functions vigorously are plied
  By strong machinery; and in solid health
  The man confirm’d long triumphs o’er disease.
  But the full ocean ebbs: There is a point,
  By nature fix’d, whence life must downwards tend.                  530
  For still the beating tide consolidates
  The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still,
  To the weak throbbings of th’ enfeebled heart.
  This languishing, these strengthning by degrees
  To hard unyielding unelastic bone,                                 535
  Thro’ tedious channels the congealing flood
  Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on;
  It loiters still: And now it stirs no more.
  This is the period few attain; the death
  Of nature: Thus (so heav’n ordain’d it) life                       540
  Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang’d,
  Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate;
  And Homer live immortal as his song.

      What does not fade? The tower that long had stood
  The crush of thunder, and the warring winds,                       545
  Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,
  Now hangs in doubtful ruins o’er its base.
  And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass,
  Descend; the Babylonian spires are sunk;
  Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.                              550
  Time shakes the liable tyranny of thrones,
  And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
  This huge rotundity we tread grows old;
  And all those worlds that roll around the sun,
  The sun himself, shall die; and ancient Night                      555
  Again involve the desolate abyss:
  Till the great FATHER thro’ the lifeless gloom
  Extend his arm to light another world,
  And bid new planets roll by other laws.
  For thro’ the regions of unbounded space,                          560
  Where unconfin’d omnipotence has room,
  BEING, in various systems, fluctuates still
  Between creation and abhorr’d decay;
  It ever did; perhaps and ever will.
  New worlds are still emerging from the deep;                       565
  The old descending, in their turns to rise.




BOOK III.

EXERCISE.


  Thro’ various toils th’ adventurous muse has past;
  But half the toil, and more than half, remains.
  Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song;
  Plain, and of little ornament; and I
  But little practis’d in th’ Aonian arts.                             5
  Yet not in vain such labours have we tried,
  If ought these lays the fickle health confirm.
  To you, ye delicate, I write; for you
  I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
  And grow still paler by the midnight lamps.                         10
  Not to debilitate with timorous rules
  A hardy frame; nor needlessly to brave
  Unglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength;
  Is all the lesson that in wholsome years
  Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow’d                     15
  Who would with warm effeminacy nurse
  The thriving oak, which on the mountain’s brow
  Bears all the blasts that sweep the wintry heav’n.

      Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils
  In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies:                         20
  Save but the grain from mildews and the flood,
  Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend.
  He knows no laws by Esculapius given;
  He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs
  Infest, nor those envenom’d shafts that fly                         25
  When rabid Sirius fires th’ autumnal noon.
  His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,
  Robust with labour, and by custom steel’d
  To every casualty of varied life;
  Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast,                          30
  And uninfected breaths the mortal South.

      Such the reward of rude and sober life;
  Of labour such. By health the peasant’s toil
  Is well repaid; if exercise were pain
  Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like these                     35
  Laconia nurs’d of old her hardy sons;
  And Rome’s unconquer’d legions urg’d their way,
  Unhurt, thro’ every toil in every clime.

      Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves
  Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone;                          40
  The greener juices are by toil subdu’d,
  Mellow’d, and subtilis’d; the vapid old
  Expell’d, and all the rancor of the blood.
  Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
  Of nature and the year; come, let us stray                          45
  Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk:
  Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan
  The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm,
  And shed a charming languor o’er the soul.
  Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost                      50
  The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
  Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus’ blasts
  This way and that convolve the lab’ring woods.
  My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain
  Or fogs relent, no season should confine                            55
  Or to the cloister’d gallery or arcade.
  Go, climb the mountain; from th’ etherial source
  Imbibe the recent gale. The chearful morn
  Beams o’er the hills; go, mount th’ exulting steed,
  Already, see, the deep-mouth’d beagles catch                        60
  The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport
  Intent, with emulous impatience try
  Each doubtful track. Or, if a nobler prey
  Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer;
  And thro’ its deepest solitudes awake                               65
  The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

      But if the breathless chase o’er hill and dale
  Exceed your strength; a sport of less fatigue,
  Not less delightful, the prolific stream
  Affords. The chrystal rivulet, that o’er                            70
  A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,
  Swarms with the silver fry. Such, thro’ the bounds
  Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent;
  Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such
  The Esk, o’erhung with woods; and such the stream                   75
  On whole Arcadian banks I first drew air,
  Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
  Tun’d to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
  Unknown in song: Tho’ not a purer stream,
  Thro’ meads more flow’ry, or more romantic groves,                  80
  Rolls toward the western main. Hail sacred flood!
  May still thy hospitable swains be blest
  In rural innocence; thy mountains still
  Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods
  For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay                           85
  With painted meadows, and the golden grain!
  Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new,
  Sportive and petulant, and charm’d with toys,
  In thy transparent eddies have I lav’d:
  Oft trac’d with patient steps thy fairy banks,                      90
  With the well-imitated fly to hook
  The eager trout, and with the slender line
  And yielding rod sollicite to the shore
  The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds
  And tepid gales obscur’d the ruffled pool,                          95
  And from the deeps call’d forth the wanton swarms.

      Form’d on the Samian school, or those of Ind,
  There are who think these pastimes scarce humane.
  Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)
  His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.                      100
  But if thro’ genuine tenderness of heart,
  Or secret want of relish for the game,
  You shun the glories of the chace, nor care
  To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
  A soft amusement, an humane delight.                               105
  To raise th’ insipid nature of the ground;
  Or tame its savage genius to the grace
  Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems
  The amiable result of happy chance,
  Is to create; and gives a god-like joy,                            110
  Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain
  To check the lawless riot of the trees,
  To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.
  O happy he! whom, when his years decline,
  (His fortune and his fame by worthy means                          115
  Attain’d, and equal to his moderate mind;
  His life approv’d by all the wise and good,
  Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves
  Of Epicurus, from this stormy world,
  Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares                           120
  Absolv’d, and sacred from the selfish crowd.
  Happiest of men! if the same soil invites
  A chosen few, companions of his youth,
  Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends;
  With whom in easy commerce to pursue                               125
  Nature’s free charms, and vie for sylvan fame:
  A fair ambition; void of strife or guile,
  Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.
  Who plans th’ enchanted garden, who directs
  The visto best, and best conducts the stream;                      130
  Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;
  Whom first the welcome spring salutes; who shews
  The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms,
  Of Flora; who best gives Pomona’s juice
  To match the sprightly genius of Champain.                         135
  Thrice happy days! in rural business past.
  Blest winter nights! when, as the genial fire
  Chears the wide hall, his cordial family
  With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
  And pleasing talk that starts no timerous fame,                    140
  With witless wantoness to hunt it down:
  Or thro’ the fairy-land of tale or song
  Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
  Engag’d, and all that strikes humanity;
  Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour                         145
  Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve,
  His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid
  His festal roof; while, o’er the light repast,
  And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
  And, thro’ the maze of conversation, trace                         150
  Whate’er amuses or improves the mind.
  Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste
  The native zest and flavour of the fruit,
  Where sense grows wild, and takes of no manure)
  The decent, honest, chearful husbandman                            155
  Should drown his labours in my friendly bowl;
  And at my table find himself at home.

      Whate’er you study, in whate’er you sweat,
  Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;
  The tennis some; and some the graceful dance.                      160
  Others, more hardy, range the purple heath,
  Or naked stubble; where from field to field
  The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight;
  Eager amid the rising cloud to pour
  The gun’s unerring thunder: And there are                          165
  Whom still the meed[6] of the green archer charms.
  He chuses best, whose labour entertains
  His vacant fancy most: The toil you hate
  Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.

      As beauty still has blemish; and the mind                      170
  The most accomplish’d its imperfect side;
  Few bodies are there of that happy mould
  But some one part is weaker than the rest:
  The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load,
  Or the chest labours. These assiduously,                           175
  But gently, in their proper arts employ’d,
  Acquire a vigor and elastic spring
  To which they were not born. But weaker parts
  Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.

      Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves                   180
  Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire.
  The prudent, even in every moderate walk,
  At first but saunter; and by slow degrees
  Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise
  Well knows the master of the flying steed.                         185
  First from the goal the manag’d coursers play
  On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth
  Repress their foamy pride; but every breath
  The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells;
  Till all the fiery mettle has its way,                             190
  And the thick thunder hurries o’er the plain.
  When all at once from indolence to toil
  You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock
  Are tir’d and crack’d, before their unctuous coats,
  Compress’d, can pour the lubricating balm.                         195
  Besides, collected in the passive veins,
  The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,
  O’erpowers the heart, and deluges the lungs
  With dangerous inundation: Oft the source
  Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood,                      200
  Asthma, and feller Peripneumonie[7],
  Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

      Th’ athletic fool, to whom what heav’n deny’d
  Of soul is well compensated in limbs,
  Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels                      205
  His vegetation and brute force decay.
  The men of better clay and finer mould
  Know nature, feel the human dignity;
  And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes.
  Pursued prolixly, even the gentlest toil                           210
  Is waste of health: Repose by small fatigue
  Is earn’d; and (where your habit is not prone
  To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows.
  The fine and subtle spirits cost too much
  To be profus’d, too much the roscid balm.                          215
  But when the hard varieties of life
  You toil to learn; or try the dusty chace,
  Or the warm deeds of some important day:
  Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
  In wish’d repose, nor court the fanning gale,                      220
  Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears
  Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires,
  Forbear! No other pestilence has driven
  Such myriads o’er th’ irremeable deep.
  Why this so fatal, the sagacious muse                              225
  Thro’ nature’s cunning labyrinths could trace:
  But there are secrets which who knows not now,
  Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
  Of science; and devote seven years to toil.
  Besides, I would not stun your patient ears                        230
  With what it little boots you to attain.
  He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
  Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,
  What signs portend the storm: To subtler minds
  He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause                      235
  Charybdis rages in th’ Ionian wave;
  Whence those impetuous currents in the main,
  Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why
  The roughning deep expects the storm, as sure
  As red Orion mounts the shrowded heaven.                           240

    In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied
  For polish’d luxury and useful arts;
  All hot and reeking from th’ Olympic strife,
  And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath
  Th’ athletic youth relax’d their weary’d limbs.                    245
  Soft oils bedew’d them, with the grateful pow’rs
  Of Nard and Cassia fraught, to sooth and heal
  The cherish’d nerves. Our less voluptuous clime
  Not much invites us to such arts as these.
  ’Tis not for those, whom gelid skies embrace,                      250
  And chilling fogs; whose perspiration feels
  Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North;
  ’Tis not for those to cultivate a skin
  Too soft; or teach the recremental fume
  Too fast to crowd thro’ such precarious ways.                      255
  For thro’ the small arterial mouths, that pierce
  In endless millions the close-woven skin,
  The baser fluids in a constant stream
  Escape, and viewless melt into the winds.
  While this eternal, this most copious waste                        260
  Of blood degenerate into vapid brine,
  Maintains its wonted measure; all the powers
  Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life
  With ease and pleasure move: But this restrain’d
  Or more or less, so more or less you feel                          265
  The functions labour. From this fatal source
  What woes descend is never to be sung.
  To take their numbers, were to count the sands
  That ride in whirlwind the parch’d Lybian air;
  Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils                  270
  The Baltic, thunder on the German shore.
  Subject not then, by soft emollient arts,
  This grand expence, on which your fates depend,
  To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart
  The genius of your clime: For from the blood                       275
  Least fickle rise the recremental steams,
  And least obnoxious to the styptic air,
  Which breathe thro’ straiter and more callous pores.
  The temper’d Scythian hence, half-naked treads
  His boundless snows, nor rues th’ inclement heaven;                280
  And hence our painted ancestors defied
  The East; nor curs’d, like us, their fickle sky.

      The body moulded by the clime, indures
  Th’ Equator heats, or Hyperborean frost:
  Except by habits foreign to its turn,                              285
  Unwise, you counteract its forming pow’r.
  Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less
  By long acquaintance: Study then your sky,
  Form to its manners your obsequious frame,
  And learn to suffer what you cannot shun.                          290
  Against the rigors of a damp cold heav’n
  To fortify their bodies, some frequent
  The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids,
  I praise their dauntless heart. A frame so steel’d
  Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts,                   295
  That breathe the Tertian or fell Rheumatism;
  The nerves so temper’d never quit their tone,
  No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts.
  But all things have their bounds: And he who makes
  By daily use the kindest regimen                                   300
  Essential to his health, should never mix
  With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue.
  He not the safe vicissitudes of life
  Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he
  To want the known, or bear unusual things.                         305
  Besides, the powerful remedies of pain
  (Since pain in spite of all our care will come)
  Should never with your prosperous days of health
  Grow too familiar: For by frequent use
  The strongest medicines lose their healing power,                  310
  And even the surest poisons theirs to kill.

      Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach
  Parch’d Mauritania, or the sultry West,
  Or the wide flood that waters Indostan,
  Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave                         315
  Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free
  Th’ evaporation thro’ the softned skin
  May bear proportion to the swelling blood.
  So shall they ’scape the fever’s rapid flames;
  So feel untainted the hot breath of hell.                          320
  With us, the man of no complaint demands
  The warm ablution, just enough to clear
  The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
  The body sacred from indecent soil.
  Still to be pure, even did it not conduce                          325
  (As much it does) to health, were greatly worth
  Your daily pains. ’Tis this adorns the rich;
  The want of this is poverty’s worst woe:
  With this external virtue, age maintains
  A decent grace; without it, youth and charms                       330
  Are loathsome. This the skilful virgin knows:
  So doubtless do your wives. For married sires,
  As well as lovers, still pretend to taste;
  Nor is it less (all prudent wives can tell)
  To lose a husband’s, than a lover’s heart.                         335

      But now the hours and seasons when to toil,
  From foreign themes recall my wandering song.
  Some labour fasting, or but slightly fed,
  To lull the grinding stomach’s hungry rage:
  Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame                           340
  ’Tis wisely done. For while the thirsty veins,
  Impatient of lean penury, devour
  The treasur’d oil, then is the happiest time
  To shake the lazy balsam from its cells.
  Now while the stomach from the full repast                         345
  Subsides; but ere returning hunger gnaws;
  Ye leaner habits give an hour to toil:
  And ye whom no luxuriancy of growth
  Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress.
  But from the recent meal no labours please,                        350
  Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial powers
  Claim all the wandering spirits to a work
  Of strong and subtle toil, and great event;
  A work of time: and you may rue the day
  You hurried, with ill-seasoned exercise,                           355
  A half concocted chyle into the blood.
  The body overcharg’d with unctuous phlegm
  Much toil demands: The lean elastic less.
  While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins,
  No labours are too hard: By those you ’scape                       360
  The slow diseases of the torpid year;
  Endless to name; to one of which alone,
  To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves
  Is pleasure: Oh! from such inhuman pains
  May all be free who merit not the wheel!                           365
  But from the burning Lion when the sun
  Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood
  Too much already maddens in the veins,
  And all the finer fluids thro’ the skin
  Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade                    370
  Reclin’d, or sauntring in the lofty grove,
  No needless slight occasion should engage
  To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon.
  Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve
  To shady walks and active rural sports                             375
  Invite. But, while the chilling dews descend,
  May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace
  Of humid skies: Tho’ ’tis no vulgar joy
  To trace the horrors of the solemn wood,
  While the soft evening saddens into night:                         380
  Tho’ the sweet poet of the vernal groves
  Melts all the night in strains of amorous woe.

      The shades descend, and midnight o’er the world
  Expands her sable wings. Great nature droops
  Thro’ all her works. Now happy he whose toil                       385
  Has o’er his languid powerless limbs diffus’d
  A pleasing lassitude: He not in vain
  Invokes the gentle deity of dreams.
  His powers the most voluptuously dissolve
  In soft repose: On him the balmy dews                              390
  Of sleep with double nutriment descend.
  But would you sweetly waste the blank of night
  In deep oblivion; or on fancy’s wings
  Visit the paradise of happy dreams,
  And waken chearful as the lively morn;                             395
  Oppress not nature sinking down to rest
  With feasts too late, too solid, or too full.
  But be the first concoction half-matur’d,
  Ere you to mighty indolence resign
  Your passive faculties. He from the toils                          400
  And troubles of the day to heavier toil
  Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks
  Amid the clouds, or Calpe’s hideous height,
  The busy dæmons hurl, or in the main
  O’erwhelm, or bury struggling under ground.                        405
  Not all a monarch’s luxury the woes
  Can counterpoise, of that most wretched man,
  Whose nights are shaken with the frantic fits
  Of wild Orestes; whose delirious brain,
  Stung by the furies, works with poisoned thought!                  410
  While pale and monstrous painting shocks the soul;
  And mangled consciousness bemoans itself
  For ever torn; and chaos floating round.
  What dreams presage, what dangers these or those
  Portend to sanity, tho’ prudent seers                              415
  Reveal’d of old, and men of deathless fame;
  We would not to the superstitious mind
  Suggest new throbs, new vanities of fear.
  ’Tis ours to teach you from the peaceful night
  To banish omens, and all restless woes.                            420

      In study some protract the silent hours,
  Which others consecrate to mirth and wine;
  And sleep till noon, and hardly live till night.
  But surely this redeems not from the shades
  One hour of life. Nor does it nought avail                         425
  What season you to drowsy Morpheus give
  Of th’ ever-varying circle of the day;
  Or whether, thro’ the tedious winter gloom,
  You tempt the midnight or the morning damps.
  The body, fresh and vigorous from repose,                          430
  Defies the early fogs: but, by the toils
  Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung,
  Weakly resists the night’s unwholsome breath.
  The grand discharge, th’ effusion of the skin,
  Slowly impair’d, the languid maladies                              435
  Creep on, and thro’ the sickning functions steal.
  So, when the chilling East invades the spring,
  The delicate Narcissus pines away
  In hectic languor; and a slow disease
  Taints all the family of flowers, condemn’d                        440
  To cruel heav’ns. But why, already prone
  To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane?
  O shame! O pity! nipt with pale Quadrille,
  And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies!

      By toil subdu’d, the Warrior and the Hind                      445
  Sleep fast and deep; their active functions soon
  With generous streams the subtle tubes supply,
  And soon the tonick irritable nerves
  Feel the fresh impulse, and awake the soul.
  The sons of indolence, with long repose,                           450
  Grow torpid; and, with slowest Lethe drunk,
  Feebly and lingringly return to life,
  Blunt every sense and powerless every limb.
  Ye, prone to sleep (whom sleeping most annoys)
  On the hard mattrass or elastic couch                              455
  Extend your limbs, and wean yourselves from sloth;
  Nor grudge the lean projector, of dry brain
  And springy nerves, the blandishments of down.
  Nor envy while the buried bacchanal
  Exhales his surfeit in prolixer dreams.                            460

    He without riot, in the balmy feast
  Of life, the wants of nature has supplied
  Who rises cool, serene, and full of soul.
  But pliant nature more or less demands,
  As custom forms her; and all sudden change                         465
  She hates of habit, even from bad to good.
  If faults in life, or new emergencies,
  From habits urge you by long time confirm’d,
  Slow may the change arrive, and stage by stage;
  Slow as the shadow o’er the dial moves,                            470
  Slow as the stealing progress of the year.

    Observe the circling year. How unperceiv’d
  Her seasons change! Behold! by slow degrees,
  Stern Winter tam’d into a ruder spring;
  The ripen’d Spring a milder summer glows;                          475
  Departing Summer sheds Pomona’s store;
  And aged Autumn brews the winter-storm.
  Slow as they come, these changes come not void
  Of mortal shocks: The cold and torrid reigns,
  The two great periods of th’ important year,                       480
  Are in their first approaches seldom safe:
  Funereal autumn all the sickly dread,
  And the black fates deform the lovely spring.
  He well advis’d, who taught our wiser sires
  Early to borrow Muscovy’s warm spoils,                             485
  Ere the first frost has touch’d the tender blade;
  And late resign them, tho’ the wanton spring
  Should deck her charms with all her sister’s rays.
  For while the effluence of the skin maintains
  Its native measure, the pleuritic Spring                           490
  Glides harmless by; and Autumn, sick to death
  With sallow Quartans, no contagion breathes.

      I in prophetic numbers could unfold
  The omens of the year: what seasons teem
  With what diseases; what the humid South                           495
  Prepares, and what the Dæmon of the East:
  But you perhaps refuse the tedious song.
  Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold,
  Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you,
  Skill’d to correct the vices of the sky,                           500
  And taught already how to each extream
  To bend your life. But should the public bane
  Infect you, or some trespass of your own,
  Or flaw of nature hint mortality:
  Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides                             505
  Along the spine, thro’ all your torpid limbs;
  When first: the head throbs, or the stomach feels
  A sickly load, a weary pain the loins;
  Be Celsus call’d: The fates come rushing on;
  The rapid fates admit of no delay.                                 510
  While wilful you, and fatally secure,
  Expect to morrow’s more auspicious sun,
  The growing pest, whose infancy was weak
  And easy vanquish’d, with triumphant sway
  O’erpow’rs your life. For want of timely care                      515
  Millions have died of medicable wounds.

    Ah! in what perils is vain life engag’d!
  What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy
  The hardiest frame! Of indolence, of toil,
  We die; of want, of superfluity.                                   520
  The all-surrounding heaven, the vital air,
  Is big with death. And, tho’ the putrid South
  Be shut; tho’ no convulsive agony
  Shake, from the deep foundations of the world,
  Th’ imprisoned plagues; a secret venom oft                         525
  Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.
  What livid deaths has sad Byzantium seen!
  How oft has Cairo, with a mother’s woe,
  Wept o’er her slaughter’d sons, and lonely streets!
  Even Albion, girt with less malignant skies,                       530
  Albion the poison of the Gods has drunk,
  And felt the sting of monsters all her own.

      Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
  Their ancient rage, at Bosworth’s purple field;
  While, for which tyrant England should receive,                    535
  Her legions in incestuous murders mix’d,
  And daily horrors; till the Fates were drunk
  With kindred blood by kindred hands profus’d:
  Another plague of more gygantic arm
  Arose, a monster never known before                                540
  Rear’d from Cocytus its portentuous head.
  This rapid fury not, like other pests,
  Pursued a gradual course, but in a day
  Rush’d as a storm o’er half th’ astonish’d isle,
  And strew’d with sudden carcasses the land.                        545

    First thro’ the shoulders, or whatever part
  Was seiz’d the first, a fervid vapour sprung.
  With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark
  Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;
  And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.                   550
  Thro’ all the yielding pores the melted blood
  Gush’d out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag’d
  The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev’d
  The stomach’s anguish. With incessant toil,
  Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,                        555
  They toss’d from side to side. In vain the stream
  Ran full and clear, they burnt and thirsted still.
  The restless arteries with rapid blood
  Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly
  The breath was fetch’d, and with huge lab’rings heav’d.            560
  At last a heavy pain oppress’d the head,
  A wild delirium came; their weeping friends
  Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
  Harass’d with toil on toil, the sinking powers
  Lay prostrate and o’erthrown; a ponderous sleep                    565
  Wrapt all the senses up: They slept and died.

      In some a gentle horror crept at first
  O’er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
  Withheld their moisture, till by art provok’d
  The sweats o’erflow’d; but in a clammy tide:                       570
  Now free and copious, now restrain’d and slow;
  Of tinctures various, as the temperature
  Had mix’d the blood; and rank with fetid steams:
  As if the pent-up humors by delay
  Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.                     575
  Here lay their hopes (tho’ little hope remain’d)
  With full effusion of perpetual sweats
  To drive the venom out. And here the fates
  Were kind, that long they linger’d not in pain.
  For who surviv’d the sun’s diurnal race                            580
  Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeem’d:
  Some the sixth hour oppress’d, and some the third.

      Of many thousands few untainted ’scap’d;
  Of those infected fewer ’scap’d alive:
  Of those who liv’d some felt a second blow;                        585
  And whom the second spar’d a third destroy’d.
  Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun
  The fierce contagion. O’er the mournful land
  Th’ infected city pour’d her hurrying swarms:
  Rous’d by the flames that fir’d her seats around,                  590
  Th’ infected country rush’d into the town.
  Some, sad at home, and in the desart some,
  Abjur’d the fatal commerce of mankind;
  In vain: where’er they fled the Fates pursued.
  Others, with hopes more specious, cross’d the main,                595
  To seek protection in far-distant skies;
  But none they found. It seem’d the general air
  Was then at enmity with English blood.
  For, but the race of England, all were safe
  In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste                         600
  The foreign blood which Albion then contain’d.
  Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
  Involv’d them still; and every breeze was bane.
  Where find relief? The salutary art
  Was mute; and, startled at the new disease,                        605
  In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.
  To heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray’rs;
  Heav’n heard them not. Of every hope depriv’d;
  Fatigu’d with vain resources; and subdued
  With woes resistless and enfeebling fear;                          610
  Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
  Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,
  Nor ought was seen but ghastly views of death;
  Infectious horror ran from face to face,
  And pale despair. ’Twas all the business then                      615
  To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
  In heaps they fell: And oft one bed, they say,
  The sickening, dying, and the dead contain’d.

      Ye guardian Gods, on whom the Fates depend
  Of tottering Albion! Ye eternal fires,                             620
  That lead thro’ heav’n the wandering year! Ye powers,
  That o’er th’ incircling elements preside!
  May nothing worse than what this age has seen
  Arrive! Enough abroad, enough at home
  Has Albion bled. Here a distemper’d heaven                         625
  Has thin’d her cities; from those lofty cliffs
  That awe proud Gaul, to Thule’s wintry reign;
  While in the West, beyond th’ Atlantic foam,
  Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have died
  The death of cowards, and of common men;                           630
  Sunk void of wounds, and fall’n without renown.

    But from these views the weeping Muses turn,
  And other themes invite my wandering song.

[Illustration]




BOOK IV.

The PASSIONS.


  The choice of aliment, the choice of air,
  The use of toil and all external things,
  Already sung; it now remains to trace
  What good what evil from ourselves proceeds:
  And how the subtle principle within                                  5
  Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay
  The passive body. Ye poetic Shades,
  That know the secrets of the world unseen,
  Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme
  Engag’d, I wander thro’ mysterious ways.                            10

    There is, they say, (and I believe there is)
  A spark within us of th’ immortal fire,
  That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
  And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,
  Its native seat; and mixes with the Gods.                           15
  Mean while this heavenly particle pervades
  The mortal elements, in every nerve
  It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain.
  And, in its secret conclave, as it feels
  The body’s woes and joys, this ruling power                         20
  Weilds at its will the dull material world,
  And is the body’s health or malady.

      By its own toil the gross corporeal frame
  Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself:
  Nor less the labours of the mind corrode                            25
  The solid fabric. For by subtle parts,
  And viewless atoms, secret Nature moves
  The mighty wheels of this stupendous world.
  By subtle fluids pour’d thro’ subtle tubes
  The natural, vital, functions are perform’d.                        30
  By these the stubborn aliments are tam’d;
  The toiling heart distributes life and strength;
  These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these
  Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.

    But ’tis not Thought (for still the soul’s employ’d)              35
  ’Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.
  All day the vacant eye without fatigue
  Strays o’er the heaven and earth; but long intent
  On microscopic arts its vigour fails.
  Just so the mind, with various thought amus’d,                      40
  Nor aches itself, nor gives the body pain.
  But anxious Study, Discontent, and Care,
  Love without hope, and Hate without revenge,
  And Fear, and Jealousy, fatigue the soul,
  Engross the subtle ministers of life,                               45
  And spoil the lab’ring functions of their share.
  Hence the lean gloom that Melancholy wears;
  The Lover’s paleness; and the sallow hue
  Of Envy, Jealousy; the meagre stare
  Of sore Revenge: The canker’d body hence                            50
  Betrays each fretful motion of the mind.

    The strong-built pedant; who both night and day
  Feeds on the coarsest fare the schools bestow,
  And crudely fattens at gross Burman’s stall;
  O’erwhelm’d with phlegm lies in a dropsy drown’d,                   55
  Or sinks in lethargy before his time.
  With useful studies you, and arts that please
  Employ your mind, amuse but not fatigue.
  Peace to each drowsy metaphysic sage!
  And ever may the German folio’s rest!                               60
  Yet some there are, even of elastic parts,
  Whom strong and obstinate ambition leads
  Thro’ all the rugged roads of barren lore,
  And gives to relish what their generous taste
  Would else refuse. But may nor thirst of fame                       65
  Nor love of knowledge urge you to fatigue
  With constant drudgery the liberal soul.
  Toy with your books: and, as the various fits
  Of humour seize you, from Philosophy
  To Fable shift; from serious Antonine                               70
  To Rabelais’ ravings, and from prose to song.

    While reading pleases, but no longer, read;
  And read aloud resounding Homer’s strain,
  And weild the thunder of Demosthenes.
  The chest so exercis’d improves its strength;                       75
  And quick vibrations thro’ the bowels drive
  The restless blood, which in unactive days
  Would loiter else thro’ unelastic tubes.
  Deem it not trifling while I recommend
  What posture suits: To stand and sit by turns,                      80
  As nature prompts, is best. But o’er your leaves
  To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts,
  And robs the fine machinery of its play.

      ’Tis the great art of life to manage well
  The restless mind. For ever on pursuit                              85
  Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers.
  Quite unemploy’d, against its own repose
  Its turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs
  Than what the body knows embitter life.
  Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of care,                          90
  To sickly musing gives the pensive mind.
  There madness enters; and the dim-ey’d Fiend,
  Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes
  Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale;
  A mournful visionary light o’erspreads                              95
  The chearful face of nature: earth becomes
  A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above.
  Then various shapes of curs’d illusion rise;
  Whate’er the wretched fears, creating Fear
  Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems                      100
  Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath
  A load of huge imagination heaves.
  And all the horrors, that the guilty feel,
  With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast.

      Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes,                        105
  Or Fear, on delicate Self-love creates.
  From other cares absolv’d, the busy mind
  Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon;
  It finds you miserable, or makes you so.
  For while yourself you anxiously explore,                          110
  Timorous Self-love, with sick’ning Fancy’s aid,
  Presents the danger that you dread the most,
  And ever galls you in your tender part.
  Hence some for love, and some for jealousy,
  For grim religion some, and some for pride,                        115
  Have lost their reason: some for fear of want
  Want all their lives; and others every day
  For fear of dying suffer worse than death.
  Ah! from your bosoms banish, if you can,
  Those fatal guests: and first the Demon Fear;                      120
  That trembles at impossible events,
  Lest aged Atlas should resign his load
  And heaven’s eternal battlements rush down.
  Is there an evil worse than fear itself?
  And what avails it that indulgent heaven                           125
  From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
  If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
  Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
  Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares,
  Of what may spring from blind Misfortune’s womb,                   130
  Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
  Serene, and master of yourself, prepare
  For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven.

      Oft from the body, by long ails mistun’d,
  These evils sprung the most important health,                      135
  That of the mind, destroy: And when the mind
  They first invade, the conscious body soon
  In sympathetic languishment declines.
  These chronic passions, while from real woes
  They rise, and yet without the body’s fault                        140
  Infest the soul, admit one only cure;
  Diversion, hurry, and a restless life.
  Vain are the consolations of the wise,
  In vain your friends would reason down your pain.
  Oh ye whose souls relentless love has tam’d                        145
  To soft distress, or friends untimely slain!
  Court not the luxury of tender thought:
  Nor deem it impious to forget those pains
  That hurt the living, nought avail the dead.
  Go, soft enthusiast! quit the cypress groves,                      150
  Nor to the rivulet’s lonely moanings tune
  Your sad complaint. Go, seek the chearful haunts
  Of men, and mingle with the bustling croud;
  Lay schemes for wealth, or power, or fame, the wish
  Of nobler minds, and push them night and day.                      155
  Or join the caravan in quest of scenes
  New to your eyes, and shifting every hour;
  Beyond the Alps, beyond the Apennines.
  Or, more advent’rous, rush into the field
  Where war grows hot; and, raging thro’ the sky,                    160
  The lofty trumpet swells the maddening soul:
  And in the hardy camp and toilsome march
  Forget all softer and less manly cares.

      But most too passive, when the blood runs low,
  Too weakly indolent to strive with pain,                           165
  And bravely by resisting conquer Fate,
  Try Circe’s arts; and in the tempting bowl
  Of poison’d Nectar sweet oblivion drink.
  Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves
  In empty air; Elysium opens round.                                 170
  A pleasing phrenzy buoys the lighten’d soul,
  And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;
  And what was difficult, and what was dire,
  Yields to your prowess and superior stars:
  The happiest you, of all that e’er were mad,                       175
  Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.
  But soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom
  Shuts o’er your head: and, as the thundering stream,
  Swoln o’er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
  Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook;                           180
  So, when the frantic raptures in your breast
  Subside, you languish into mortal man;
  You sleep, and waking find yourself undone.
  For prodigal of life in one rash night
  You lavish’d more than might support three days.                   185
  A heavy morning comes; your cares return
  With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well
  May be endur’d; so may the throbbing head:
  But such a dim delirium, such a dream,
  Involves you; such a dastardly despair                             190
  Unmans your soul, as madd’ning Pentheus felt
  When, baited round Citheron’s cruel sides,
  He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.
  You curse the sluggish Port; you curse the wretch,
  The felon, with unnatural mixture first                            195
  Who dar’d to violate the virgin Wine.
  Or on the fugitive Champain you pour
  A thousand curses; for to heav’n your soul
  It rapt, to plunge you deeper in despair.
  Perhaps you rue even that divinest gift,                           200
  The gay, serene, good-natur’d Burgundy,
  Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine:
  And with that heaven from mortals had withheld
  The grape, and all intoxicating bowls.

    Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect                         205
  What follies in your loose unguarded hour
  Escap’d. By one irrevocable word,
  Perhaps that meant no harm, you lose a friend.
  Or in the rage of wine your hasty hand
  Performs a deed to haunt you to your grave.                        210
  Add that your means, your health, your parts decay;
  Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform’d
  They hardly know you; or if one remains
  To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.
  Despis’d, unwept you fall; who might have left                     215
  A sacred, cherish’d, sadly-pleasing name;
  A name still to be utter’d with a sigh.
  Your last ungraceful scene has quite effac’d
  All sense and memory of your former worth.

    How to live happiest; how avoid the pains,                       220
  The disappointments, and disgusts of those
  Who would in pleasure all their hours employ;
  The precepts here of a divine old man
  I could recite. Tho’ old, he still retain’d
  His manly sense, and energy of mind.                               225
  Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe;
  He still remember’d that he once was young;
  His easy presence check’d no decent joy.
  Him even the dissolute admir’d; for he
  A graceful looseness when he pleas’d put on,                       230
  And laughing cou’d instruct. Much had he read,
  Much more had seen; he studied from the life,
  And in th’ original perus’d mankind.

      Vers’d in the woes and vanities of life,
  He pitied man: And much he pitied those                            235
  Whom falsely-smiling fate has curs’d with means
  To dissipate their days in quest of joy.
  Our aim is Happiness; ’tis yours, ’tis mine,
  He said, ’tis the pursuit of all that live;
  Yet few attain it, if ’twas e’er attain’d.                         240
  But they the widest wander from the mark,
  Who thro’ the flow’ry paths of saunt’ring Joy
  Seek this coy Goddess; that from stage to stage
  Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue.
  For, not to name the pains that pleasure brings                    245
  To counterpoise itself, relentless Fate
  Forbids that we thro’ gay voluptuous wilds
  Should ever roam: And were the Fates more kind
  Our narrow luxuries would soon be stale.
  Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick,                    250
  And, cloy’d with pleasure, squeamishly complain
  That all was vanity, and life a dream.
  Let nature rest: Be busy for yourself,
  And for your friend; be busy even in vain
  Rather than teize her sated appetites.                             255
  Who never fasts no banquet e’er enjoys;
  Who never toils or watches never sleeps.
  Let nature rest: And when the taste of joy
  Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety.

      ’Tis not for mortals always to be blest.                       260
  But him the least the dull or painful hours
  Of life oppress, whom sober Sense conducts
  And Virtue, thro’ this labyrinth we tread.
  Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin;
  Virtue and Sense are one; and, trust me, he                        265
  Who has not virtue is not truly wise.
  Virtue (for meer good-nature is a fool)
  Is sense and spirit, with humanity:
  ’Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds;
  ’Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just.                       270
  Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare;
  But at his heart the most undaunted son
  Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.
  To noblest uses this determines wealth;
  This is the solid pomp of prosperous days;                         275
  The peace and shelter of adversity.
  And if you pant for glory, build your fame
  On this foundation, which the secret shock
  Defies of Envy and all-sapping Time.
  The gawdy gloss of Fortune only strikes                            280
  The vulgar eye: The suffrage of the wise,
  The praise that’s worth ambition, is attain’d
  By Sense alone, and dignity of mind.

      Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul,
  Is the best gift of heaven: a happiness                            285
  That even above the smiles and frowns of fate
  Exalts great Nature’s favourites: a wealth
  That ne’er encumbers, nor to baser hands
  Can be transfer’d: it is the only good
  Man justly boasts of, or can call his own.                         290
  Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn’d;
  Or dealt by chance, to shield a lucky knave,
  Or throw a cruel sun-shine on a fool.
  But for one end, one much-neglected use,
  Are riches worth your care: (for Nature’s wants                    295
  Are few, and without opulence supplied.)
  This noble end is, to produce the Soul;
  To shew the virtues in their fairest light;
  To make Humanity the Minister
  Of bounteous Providence; and teach the Breast                      300
  That generous luxury the Gods enjoy.

    Thus, in his graver vein, the friendly Sage
  Sometimes declaim’d. Of Right and Wrong he taught
  Truths as resin’d as ever Athens heard;
  And (strange to tell!) he practis’d what he preach’d.              305
  Skill’d in the Passions, how to check their sway
  He knew, as far as Reason can controul
  The lawless Powers. But other cares are mine:
  Form’d in the school of Pæon, I relate
  What Passions hurt the body, what improve:                         310
  Avoid them, or invite them, as you may.

      Know then, whatever chearful and serene
  Supports the mind, supports the body too.
  Hence the most vital movement mortals feel
  Is Hope; the balm and life-blood of the soul.                      315
  It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent heaven
  Sent down the kind delusion, thro’ the paths
  Of rugged life; to lead us patient on;
  And make our happiest state no tedious thing.
  Our greatest good, and what we least can spare.                    320
  Is Hope; the last of all our evils, Fear.

    But there are Passions grateful to the breast,
  And yet no friends to Life; perhaps they please
  Or to excess, and dissipate the soul;
  Or while they please, torment. The stubborn Clown,                 325
  The ill-tam’d Ruffian, and pale Usurer,
  (If Love’s omnipotence such hearts can mould)
  May safely mellow into love; and grow
  Refin’d, humane, and generous, if they can.
  Love in such bosoms never to a fault                               330
  Or pains or pleases. But ye finer Souls,
  Form’d to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill
  With all the tumults, all the joys and pains,
  That beauty gives; with caution and reserve
  Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose,                             335
  Nor court too much the Queen of charming cares.
  For, while the cherish’d poison in your breast
  Ferments and maddens; sick with jealousy,
  Absence, distrust, or even with anxious joy,
  The wholsome appetites and powers of life                          340
  Dissolve in languor. The coy stomach loaths
  The genial board: Your chearful days are gone:
  The generous bloom that flush’d your cheeks is fled.
  To sighs devoted and to tender pains,
  Pensive you sit, or solitary stray,                                345
  And waste your youth in musing. Musing first
  Toy’d into care your unsuspecting heart:
  It found a liking there, a sportful fire,
  And that fomented into serious love;
  Which musing daily strengthens and improves                        350
  Thro’ all the heights of fondness and romance:
  And you’re undone, the fatal shaft has sped,
  If once you doubt whether you love or no.
  The body wastes away; th’ infected mind,
  Dissolv’d in female tenderness, forgets                            355
  Each manly virtue, and grows dead to fame.
  Sweet heaven from such intoxicating charms
  Defend all worthy breasts! Not that I deem
  Love always dangerous, always to be shun’d.
  Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk                          360
  In wanton and unmanly tenderness,
  Adds bloom to Health; o’er every virtue sheds
  A gay, humane, and amiable grace,
  And brightens all the ornaments of man.
  But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack’d                      365
  With jealousy, fatigued with hope and fear,
  Too serious, or too languishingly fond,
  Unnerves the body and unmans the soul.
  And some have died for Love; and some run mad;
  And some with desperate hand themselves have slain.                370

      Some to extinguish, others to prevent,
  A mad devotion to one dangerous Fair,
  Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate
  The cares of Love amongst a hundred Brides.
  Th’ event is doubtful: for there are who find                      375
  A cure in this; there are who find it not.
  ’Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls
  The wound, to those who are sincerely sick.
  For while from feverish and tumultuous joys
  The nerves grow languid and the soul subsides;                     380
  The tender Fancy smarts with every sting;
  And what was Love before is Madness now.
  Is health your care, or luxury your aim,
  Be temperate still: When Nature bids obey;
  Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb.                           385
  But when the prurient habit of delight,
  Or loose Imagination, spurs you on
  To deeds above your strength, impute it not
  To Nature: Nature all compulsion hates.
  Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown                                 390
  Urge you to feats you well might sleep without;
  To make what should be rapture a fatigue,
  A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms
  Of twining Laïs melt your manhood down.
  For from the colliquation of soft joys                             395
  How chang’d you rise! the ghost of what you was!
  Languid, and melancholy, and gaunt, and wan;
  Your veins exhausted and your nerves unstrung.
  Spoil’d of its balm and sprightly zest, the blood
  Grows vapid phlegm; along the tender nerves                        400
  (To each slight impulse tremblingly awake)
  A subtle Fiend that mimics all the plagues
  Rapid and restless springs from part to part.
  The blooming honours of your youth are fallen;
  Your vigour pines; your vital powers decay;                        405
  Diseases haunt you; and untimely Age
  Creeps on; unsocial, impotent, and lewd.
  Infatuate, impious, epicure! to waste
  The stores of pleasure, chearfulness, and health!
  Infatuate all who make delight their trade,                        410
  And coy perdition every hour pursue.

      Who pines with Love, or in lascivious flames
  Consumes, is with his own consent undone:
  He chuses to be wretched, to be mad;
  And warn’d proceeds and wilful to his fate.                        415
  But there’s a Passion, whole tempestuous sway
  Tears up each virtue planted in the breast,
  And shakes to ruins proud philosophy.
  For pale and trembling Anger rushes in,
  With fault’ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare;                420
  Fierce as the Tyger, madder than the seas,
  Desperate, and arm’d with more than human strength.
  How soon the calm, humane, and polish’d man
  Forgets compunction, and starts up a fiend!
  Who pines in Love, or wastes with silent Cares,                    425
  Envy, or Ignominy, or tender Grief,
  Slowly descends and ling’ring to the shades.
  But he whom Anger stings, drops, if he dies,
  At once, and rushes apoplectic down;
  Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell.                             430
  For, as the Body thro’ unnumber’d strings
  Reverberates each vibration of the Soul;
  As is the Passion, such is still the Pain
  The Body feels; or chronic, or acute.
  And oft a sudden storm at once o’erpowers                          435
  The Life, or gives your Reason to the winds.
  Such fates attend the rash alarm of Fear,
  And sudden Grief, and Rage, and sudden Joy.

      There are, mean time, to whom the boist’rous fit
  Is Health, and only fills the sails of life.                       440
  For where the Mind a torpid winter leads,
  Wrapt in a Body corpulent and cold,
  And each clogg’d function lazily moves on;
  A generous sally spurns th’ incumbent load,
  Unlocks the breast, and gives a cordial glow.                      445
  But if your wrathful blood is apt to boil,
  Or are your nerves too irritably strung;
  Wave all Dispute; be cautious if you joke;
  Keep Lent for ever; and forswear the Bowl.
  For one rash moment sends you to the shades,                       450
  Or shatters every hopeful scheme of life,
  And gives to horror all your days to come.
  Fate, arm’d with thunder, fire, and every plague
  That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind,
  And makes the happy wretched in an hour,                           455
  O’erwhelms you not with woes so horrible
  As your own Wrath, nor gives more sudden blows.

      While Choler works, good Friend, you may be wrong;
  Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight.
  ’Tis not too late to morrow to be brave;                           460
  If Honour bids, to morrow kill or die.
  But calm advice against a raging fit
  Avails too little; and it tries the power
  Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song,
  To tame the Fiend that sleeps a gentle Lamb,                       465
  And wakes a Lion. Unprovok’d and calm,
  You reason well, see as you ought to see,
  And wonder at the madness of mankind:
  Seiz’d with the common rage, you soon forget
  The speculations of your wiser hours.                              470
  Beset with Furies of all deadly shapes,
  Fierce and insidious, violent and slow;
  With all that urge or lure us on to Fate;
  What refuge shall we seek? what arms prepare?
  Where Reason proves too weak, or void of wiles,                    475
  To cope with subtle or impetuous Powers,
  I would invoke new Passions to your aid:
  With Indignation would extinguish Fear,
  With Fear or generous Pity vanquish Rage,
  And Love with Pride; and force to force oppose.                    480

      There is a Charm: a Power that sways the breast;
  Bids every Passion revel or be still;
  Inspires with Rage, or all your Cares dissolves;
  Can sooth Distraction, and almost Despair.
  That Power is Music: Far beyond the stretch                        485
  Of those unmeaning warblers on our stage;
  Those clumsy Heroes, those fat-headed Gods,
  Who move no Passion justly but Contempt:
  Who, like our dancers (light indeed and strong!)
  Do wond’rous feats, but never heard of grace.                      490
  The fault is ours; we bear those monstrous arts,
  Good Heaven! we praise them: we, with loudest peals,
  Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels;
  And, with insipid shew of rapture, die
  Of ideot notes, impertinently long.                                495
  But he the Muse’s laurel justly shares,
  A Poet he, and touch’d with Heaven’s own fire;
  Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of sounds,
  Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul;
  Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain,                       500
  In Love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains
  Breathes a gay rapture thro’ your thrilling breast;
  Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad;
  Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings.
  Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old                   505
  Appeas’d the fiend of melancholy Saul.
  Such was, if old and heathen fame say true,
  The man who bade the Theban domes ascend,
  And tam’d the savage nations with his song;
  And such the Thracian, whose harmonious lyre,                      510
  Tun’d to soft woe, made all the mountains weep;
  Sooth’d even th’ inexorable powers of Hell,
  And half redeem’d his lost Eurydice.
  Music exalts each Joy, allays each Grief,
  Expells Diseases, softens every Pain,                              515
  Subdues the rage of Poison, and the Plague;
  And hence the wise of ancient days ador’d
  One Power of Physic, Melody, and Song.


_The =END=._

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Hygeia the goddess of health, was, according to the genealogy
of the heathen deities, the daughter of Esculapius; who, as well as
Apollo, was distinguished by the name of Pæon.

[2] The wild rose, or that which grows upon the wild briar.

[3] The burning fever.

[4] Hippocrates.

[5] In the human body, as well as in those of other animals, the larger
blood-vessels are composed of smaller ones; which, by the violent
motion and pressure of the fluids in the large vessels, lose their
cavities by degrees, and degenerate into impervious chords or fibres.
In proportion as these small vessels become solid, the larger must of
course grow less extensile, more rigid, and make a stronger resistance
to the action of the heart, and force of the blood. From this gradual
condensation of the smaller vessels, and consequent rigidity of the
larger ones, the progress of the human body from infancy to old age is
accounted for.

[6] This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and
signifies Reward or Prize.

[7] The inflammation of the lungs.




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other
spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.




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