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The Art Of Preserving Health

John Armstrong

BOOK I. AIR.

Daughterof Pæon, queen of every joy,
Hygeia whose indulgent smile sustains
 The various race luxuriant nature pours,
 And on th' immortal essences bestows
 Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend!
 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.
 When thro' the blue serenity of heaven
 Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host
 Of Pain and Sickness, squalid and deform'd,
 Confounded sink into the loathsome gloom,
 Where in deep Erebus involv'd the Fiends
 Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death,
 Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe,
 Swarm thro' the shudd'ring air: whatever plagues
 Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings
 Rise from the putrid watry element,
 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
 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
 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
 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!
 Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow,
 And let it wisely teach thy wholesome laws:
 “How best the sickle fabric to support
 “Of mortal man; in healthful body how
 “A healthful mind the longest to maintain.”
 '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
 Of nature, and with daring steps proceed
 Thro' paths the muss 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,
 And quell the deadly 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
 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;
 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
 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
 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 rancour fraught, relaxes more
 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
 To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)
 Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
 Roll'd from so many thundring chimneys, tame
 The putrid steams that overswarm the sky;
 This caustic venom would perhaps corrode
 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,
 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;
 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!
 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
 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
 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;
 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 Lincoln spreads
 Build not, nor rest too long thy wand'ring feet.
 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.
 From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest
 With fev'rish blasts subdues the sickning land:
 Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest,
 Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains
 That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins,

 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;
 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;
 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:
 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
 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
 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,
 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
 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;
 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
 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
 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 extremes,
 How breathe unhurt the withering element,
 Or hazy atmosphere: Tho' Custom moulds
 To ev'ry 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
 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 quaking bog;
 Sollicitous, 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.
 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 toilsome pleasures of the chase.
 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,
 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.

 Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year
 In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch
 The skin and lungs, and bake the thickening blood;
 Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat,
 Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air;
 And wake the fountains from their secret beds,
 And into lakes dilate the rapid stream.
 Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool,
 The moist relaxing vegetable store
 Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied
 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
 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.
 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
 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
 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,
 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
 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?
 Or is it fix'd in the Decrees above
 That lofty Albion melt into the main?
 Indulgent Nature! O difsolve this gloom!
 Bind in eternal adamant the winds
 That drown or wither: Give the genial West
 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 champaign
 Swells into chearful hills; where Marjoram
 And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air;
 And where the Cynorrhodon with the rose
 For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil
 Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes.
 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
 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
 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.
 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
 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

 High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides
 Th' etherial deep with endless billows chafes.
 His purer mansion nor contagious years
 Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.

 But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain,
 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.
 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
 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,
 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
 Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope
 To feel, the genial vigour of the sun!
 While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames
 The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows
 The tender lily, languishingly sweet;
 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 gen'rous heat
 Glows thro' the mass of grosser elements,
 And kindles into life the ponderous 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,
 First-born of heaven, and only less than God!

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 ev'n a proud
 Stupendous solitude frowns o'er the heath,
 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
 Demand my song. Elysian gales adieu!
 The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow,
 The generous stream that waters every part,
 And motion, vigour, and warm life conveys
 To every particle that moves or lives;
 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
 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
 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.

 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,
 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,
 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,
 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 luscious bacon rue,
 Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste
 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
 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
 The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss,
 Or pathless sky. And if the Steer must fall,
 In youth and sanguine vigour let him die;
 Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails,
 Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke.
 Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease,
 Indulge the veteran Ox; but wiser thou,
 From the bald mountain or the barren downs,
 Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed;
 A race of purer blood, with exercise
 Resin'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 wholesome food, the abominable growth
 Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste
 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
 (Fond to incorporate with all it meets)
 Coily they mix, and shun with slippery wiles
 The woo'd embrace. Th' irresoluble oil,
 So gentle late and blandishing, in floods
 Of rancid bile o'erflows: What tumults hence,
 What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.
 Chuse leaner viands, ye whose jovial make
 Too fast the gummy nutriment imbibes:
 Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life
 Your cumbrous clay; nor on th' infeebling down,
 Irresolute, protract the morning hours.
 But let the man whose bones are thinly clad,
 With chearful ease and succulent repast
 Improve his habit if he can; for each

 Extreme departs from perfect sanity.
 I could relate what table this demands
 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,
 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
 Than the moist Melon, or pale Cucumber.
 Of chilly nature others fly the board
 Supply'd with slaughter, and the vernal powers
 For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore.
 Some even the generous nutriment detest
 Which, in the shell, the sleeping embryo rears.
 Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts
 Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:
 The balmy quintessence of every flower,

 And every grateful herb that decks the spring;
 The fost'ring dew of tender sprouting life;
 The best refection 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.
 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
 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 fev'rish flushings all the face,
 Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue;
 Or much diminish or too much increase
 Th' expence, which nature's wise Å“conomy,
 Without or waste or avarice, maintains.
 Such cates abjur'd, let prouling hunger loose,
 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;
 The Tiger, 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.
 Prompted by instinct's never-erring power,
 Each creature knows its proper aliment;
 But man, th' inhabitant of ev'ry clime,
 With all the commoners of nature feeds.
 Directed, bounded, by this power within,
 Their cravings are well-aim'd: Voluptuous 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,
 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.
 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,
 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;
 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,
 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.
 Such various foods, th' 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
 To hermit's diet needlesly 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,
 Of every realm. It matters not mean while
 How much to-morrow differ from to-day;
 So far indulge: 'tis fit, besides, that man,
 To change obnoxious, be to change innur'd.
 But stay the curious appetite, and taste
 With caution fruits you never tried before.
 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
 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
 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
 The softest food: unfinish'd and deprav'd,
 The chyle, in all its future wanderings, owns
 Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams
 So to be clear'd, but foulness will remain.
 To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt
 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

 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
 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
 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
 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
 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,
 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 feeds its kindred touch:
 Be frugal ev'n of that: a little give
 At first; that kindled, add a little more;
 Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame
 Reviv'd, with all its wonted vigour glows.
 But tho' the two (the full and the jejune)
 Extremes have each their vice; it much avails
 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
 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.
 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:
 Then chiefly when the summer beams inflame
 The brazen heavens; or angry Sirius 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,
 Will save your head from harm, tho' round the world
 The dreaded Causos 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 chear
 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

 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;
 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
 The prone creation; yields what once suffic'd
 Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young;
 Ere 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.
 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,
 Regards not. On the waste of iron fields,

 Untam'd, intractable, 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
 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
 The shrubby herbage on their meagre hills.
 Girt by the burning Zone, not thus the South
 Her swarthy sons in either Ind, maintains:
 Or thirsty Libya; from whose fervid loins
 The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams
 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 shoals
 Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood
 Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain
 Its tumid fervour 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,
 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 crisp Ananas wraps its poignant sweets.
 Earth's vaunted progeny: In ruder air
 Too coy to flourish, even too 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.
 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
 Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls.
 The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
 Supports in else intolerable air:
 While the cool Palm, the Plaintain, and the grove
 That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage

 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
 Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
 With holy reverence 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
 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
 Enwrap 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.
 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,
 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 crystal element:
 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 vegetate or live.
 O comfortable streams! With eager lips
 And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
 New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins.
 No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
 None warmer sought the sires of human kind.
 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.
 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,
 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
 The choice of water. Thus the Coan 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
0 Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air;
1 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 crystal stream,
 Through rocks resounding, or for many a mile
 O'er the chaf'd pebbles hurl'd, yields wholesome, pure
 And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
 And half the mountains melt into the tide.
0 Tho' thirst were e'er so resolute, avoid
1 The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods
2 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
 Has from prophane embraces disengag'd
 The violated lymph. The virgin stream
 In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.
 Nothing like simple element dilutes
0 The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow.
1 But where the ftomach indolent and cold
2 Toys with its duty, animate with wine
3 Th' insipid stream: Tho' golden Ceres yields

 A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught;
 Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all
 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
0 Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years,
1 Embalm'd in siery quintescence of wine,
2 The puny wonders of the reptile world,
3 The tender rudiments of life, the slim
4 Unravellings of minute anatomy,
 Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain.
 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
 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
  Another time perhaps shall sing the joys,
 The fatal charms, the many woes of wine;
 Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers.
 Mean time, I would not always dread the bowl,
 Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,
 Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expells
 The loitering crudities that burden 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
 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
 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
 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.
 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,
 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!
 What dextrous 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,
 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
 Beyond its natural fervour 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
 The heart's increasing force; and, day by day,
 The growth advances: till the larger tubes,
 Acquiring (from their elemental veins,

 Condens'd to solid chords) a firmer tone,
 Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood.
 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 viscuous fluids and elastic tubes;
 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 downward tend.
 For still the beating tide consolidates
 The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still
 To the weak throbs of th' ill-supported heart.
 This languishing, these strength'ning by degrees
 To hard unyielding unelastic bone,
 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

 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,
 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.
 Time shakes the stable 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
 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,
 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;
 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.
 Yet not in vain such labours have we tried,
 If aught 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.
 Not to debilitate with timorous rules
 A hardy frame; nor needlesly to brave
 Unglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength;
 Is all the lesson that in wholesome years
 Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow'd
 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;
 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
 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,

 And uninfected breathes 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
 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;
 The greener juices are by toil subdu'd,
 Mellow'd, and subtiliz'd; the vapid old
 Expell'd, and all the rancour of the blood.
 Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
 Of nature and the year; come, let us stray
 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

 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
 Or to the cloister'd gallery or arcade.
 Go, climb the mountain; from th' ethereal 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
 The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport
 Intent, with emulous impatience try
 Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey
 Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer;
 And thro' its deepest solitudes awake
 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 crystal rivulet, that o'er
 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
 On whose 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 flowery or more romantic groves,
 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
 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,
 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,
 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)
0 His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
 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.
 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,
0 Is to create; and gives a god-like joy,
1 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
 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
 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
 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;
 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.
 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 timorous fame,
 With witless wantonness 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
 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
 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
 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.
 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
 Whom still the meed 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
 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 refufe their load,
 Or the chest labours. These assiduously,
 But gently, in their proper arts employ'd,

 Acquire a vigour and springy activity
 To which they were not born. But weaker parts
 Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.
 Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves
 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.
 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,
 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.
 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,
 Asthma and feller Peripneumony,
 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
 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.
 Pursu'd prolixly, even the gentlest toil
 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.
 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,
 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
 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
 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
 Charybdis rages in th' Ionian wave;
 Whence those impetuous currents in the main
 Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why

 The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
 As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.
 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 limbs.
 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,
 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.
 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
 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
 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 Libyan air;
 Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils
 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
 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;
 And hence our painted ancestors defied

 The East: nor curs'd, like us, their fickle sky.
 The body, moulded by the clime, endures
 Th' Equator heats or Hyperborean frost:
 Except by habits foreign to its turn,
 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.
 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
 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
 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,
 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
0 The strongest medicines lose their healing power,
1 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 laves rich Indostan,
 Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave
 Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free
 Th' evaporation thro' the soften'd skin
 May bear proportion to the swelling blood.
 So may they 'scape the fever's rapid flames;
 So feel untainted the hot breath of hell.
 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, ev'n did it not conduce
 (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
 Are loathsome. This the venal Graces know;
 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.
 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
 '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
 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,
 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 untimely exercise,
 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
 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!
 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
 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
 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:
 Tho' the sweet Poet of the vernal groves
 Melts all the night in strains of am'rous 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
 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
 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;
 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
 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.
 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 poison'd thought:
 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
 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.
 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
 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,

 Defies the early fogs: but, by the toils
 Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung,
 Weakly resists the night's unwholesome breath.
 The grand discharge, th' effusion of the skin,
 Slowly impair'd, the languid maladies
 Creep on, and thro' the sickning functions steal.
 As, 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
 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
 Sleep fast and deep: their active functions soon
 With generous streams the subtle tubes supply;
 And soon the tonic irritable nerves
 Feel the fresh impulse and awake the soul.
 The sons of indolence with long repose,
 Grow torpid; and with slowest Lethe drunk,

 Feebly and lingringly return to life,
 Blunt every sense and pow'rless every limb.
 Ye, prone to sleep (whom sleeping most annoys)
 On the hard matrass or elastic couch
 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.
 He without riot, in the balmy feast
 Of life, the wants of nature has supply'd
 Who rises, cool, serene, and full of soul.
 But pliant nature more or less demands,
 As custom forms her; and all sudden change
 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,
 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;
 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,
 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,
 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
 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
 Prepares, and what the Demon 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,
 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
 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.
 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,
 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:
 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
 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,
 Albion the poison of the Gods has drank,
 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,
 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 gigantic arm
 Arose, a monster never known before,
 Rear'd from Cocytus its portentous head.
 This rapid Fury not, like other pests,
 Pursu'd a gradual course, but in a day
 Rush'd as a storm o'er half th' astonish'd isle,
 And strew'd with sudden carcases the land.
 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.
 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,

 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.
 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.
 Harrass'd with toil on toil, the sinking powers
 Lay prostrate and o'erthrown; a ponderous sleep
 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:
 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 humours by delay
 Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
 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
 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;
 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,
 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 pursu'd.
 Others, with hopes more specious, cross'd the main,
 To seek protection in far distant skies;
 But none they found. It seem'd the general air,

 From pole to pole, from Atlas to the East,
 Was then at enmity with English blood.
 For, but the race of England, all were safe
 In foreign climes; nor did this Fury taste
 The foreign blood which England 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,
 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;
 Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
 Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,
 Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
 Infectious horror ran from face to face,
 And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
 To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
 In heaps they fell: and oft one bed, they say,
 The sick'ning, dying, and the dead contain'd.

 Ye guardian Gods, on whom the Fates depend
 Of tottering Albion! ye eternal Fires
 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
 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 dy'd
 The death of cowards and of common men:
 Sunk void of wounds, and fall'n without renown.
 But from these views the weeping Muses turn,
 And other themes invite my wandering song.

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
 Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay
 The passive Body. Ye poetic Shades,
 Who know the secrets of the world unseen,
 Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme

 Engag'd, I wander thro' mysterious ways.
 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.
 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
 Wields 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
 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.
 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)
 '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,
 Nor akes 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,
 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

 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,
 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 drousy metaphysic sage!
 And ever may all heavy systems rest!
 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,
 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
 To Rabelais' ravings, and from prose to song.

 While reading pleases, but no longer, read;
 And read aloud resounding Homer's strain,
 And wield the thunder of Demosthenes.
 The chest so exercis'd improves its strength;
 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,
 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
 Of knowledge bent, it starves the grosser powers:
 Quite unemploy'd, against its own repose
 It turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs
 Than what the body knows embitter life.
 Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of Care,
 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
 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
 Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath
 A load of huge imagination heaves;
 And all the horrors that the murderer feels
 With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast.
 Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes,
 Of 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,
 Timorous Self-love, with sickning 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,
 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 Dæmon Fear;
 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
 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,
 Appall 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,
 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
 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.
 O ye, whose souls relentless love has tam'd
 To soft distress, or friends untimely fal'n!
 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,
 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 same, the wish
 Of nobler minds, and push them night and day.
 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,
 The lofty trumpet swells the madd'ning 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,
 And bravely by resisting conquer Fate,
 Try Circe's arts; and in the tempting bowl
 Of poison'd Nectar sweet oblivion swill.
 Struck by the pow'rful charm, the gloom dissolves
 In empty air; Elysium opens round,
 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,
 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 thund'ring stream,
 Swoln o'er its banks with sudden mountain rain,
 Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook;
 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.
 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
 Unmans your soul, as madd'ning Pentheus felt,
 When, baited round Cithæron'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
 Who dar'd to violate the virgin Wine.
 Or on the fugitive Champain you pour
 A thousand curses; for to heav'n it rapt
 Your soul, to plunge you deeper in despair.

 Perhaps you rue even that divinest gift,
 The gay, serene, good-natur'd Burgundy,
 Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine:
 And wish that heaven from mortals had with-held
 The grape, and all intoxicating bowls.
 Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect
 What follies in your loose unguarded hour
 Escap'd. For 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 the grave.
 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
 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,
 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.
 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,
 And laughing could 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
 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.

 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
 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 grow stale.
 Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick,
 And, cloy'd with pleasure, squeamishly complain
 That all is 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.
 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.
 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, still
 A faithless Heart betrays the Head unsound,
 Virtue (for mere 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.
 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 hoblest uses this determines wealth;
 This is the solid pomp of prosperous days;
 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
 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
 That even above the smiles and frowns of fate
 Exalts great Nature's favourites: a wealth
 That ne'er encumbers, nor can be transferr'd.
 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
 Are few, and without opulence supply'd.)
 This noble end is, to produce the Soul;
 To shrew the virtues in their fairest light;
 To make Humanity the Minister
 Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast
 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 refin'd as ever Athens heard;
 And (strange to tell!) he practis'd what he preach'd.
 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:
 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.
 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,
 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,
 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
 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,
 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 wholesome appetites and powers of life
 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,
 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
 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
 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
 In wanton and unmanly tenderness,
 Adds bloom to Health; o'er ev'ry virtue sheds
 A gay, humane, a sweet, and generous grace,
 And brightens all the ornaments of man.
 But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack'd
 With jealousy, fatigu'd 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 hands themselves have slain.

 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 an hundred Brides.
 Th' event is doubtful: for there are who find
 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,
 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:
 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
 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
 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
 (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;
 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,
 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.
 But there's a Passion, whose 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;
 Fierce as the Tiger, 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,
 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.
 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

 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.
 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.
 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,
 Or shatters ev'ry hopeful scheme of life,
 And gives to horror all your days to come.
 Fate, arm'd with thunder, fire, and ev'ry plague,
 That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind,
 And makes the happy wretched in an hour,

 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;
 If honour bids, to morrow kill or die.
 But calm advice against a raging fit
 Avails too little; and it braves the power
 Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song,
 To tame the Fiend that sleeps a gentle Lamb,
 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.
 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
 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.
 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
 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.
 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.
 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,
 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
 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 melodious lyre,
 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,

 Expels Diseases, softens every Pain,
 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.