{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_70326/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_70326","id":"gutenberg_70326","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70326","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Health & Medicine","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Poetry","Health -- Early works to 1800","Health -- Poetry","Hygiene -- Early works to 1800","Hygiene -- Poetry"],"text":"THE\n\n ART\n\n OF PRESERVING\n\n HEALTH:\n\n A\n\n POEM.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n _LONDON_:\n Printed for A. MILLAR, opposite to _Katharine-Street_ in the _Strand_.\n\n MDCCXLIV.\n\n [Price Four Shillings sewed.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE\n\nART\n\nOF PRESERVING\n\nHEALTH.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK I.\n\nAIR.\n\n\n Daughter of P\u00e6on, queen of every joy,\n HYGEIA[1]; whose indulgent smile sustains\n The various race luxuriant nature pours,\n And on th\u2019 immortal essences bestows\n Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! 5\n Thou, chearful guardian of the rolling year,\n Whether thou wanton\u2019st on the western gale,\n Or shak\u2019st the rigid pinions of the north,\n Diffusest life and vigour thro\u2019 the tracts\n Of air, thro\u2019 earth, and ocean\u2019s deep domain. 10\n When thro\u2019 the blue serenity of heav\u2019n\n Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host\n Of pain and sickness, squallid and deform\u2019d,\n Confounded sink into the loathsom gloom,\n Where in deep Erebus involv\u2019d the fiends 15\n Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death,\n Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe,\n Swarm thro\u2019 the shuddering air: whatever plagues\n Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings\n Rise from the putrid watry element, 20\n The damp waste forest, motionless and rank,\n That smothers earth and all the breathless winds,\n Or the vile carnage of th\u2019 inhuman field;\n Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south;\n Whatever ills th\u2019 extremes or sudden change 25\n Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce;\n They fly thy pure effulgence: they, and all\n The secret poisons of avenging heaven,\n And all the pale tribes halting in the train\n Of vice and heedless pleasure: or if aught 30\n The comet\u2019s glare amid the burning sky,\n Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin\u2019d,\n Portend disastrous to the vital world;\n Thy salutary power averts their rage,\n Averts the general bane: and but for thee 35\n Nature would sicken, nature soon would die.\n\n Without thy chearful active energy\n No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings,\n No more the maids of Helicon delight.\n Come then with me, O Goddess heavenly-gay! 40\n Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow,\n And let it wisely teach thy wholesom laws:\n \u201cHow best the fickle fabric to support\n \u201cOf mortal man; in healthful body how\n \u201cA healthful mind the longest to maintain.\u201d 45\n \u2019Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse\n The best, and those of most extensive use;\n Harder in clear and animated song\n Dry philosophic precepts to convey.\n Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace 50\n Of nature, and with daring steps proceed\n Thro\u2019 paths the muses never trod before.\n\n Nor should I wander doubtful of my way,\n Had I the lights of that sagacious mind\n Which taught to check the pestilential fire, 55\n And quel the dreaded Python of the Nile.\n O Thou belov\u2019d by all the graceful arts,\n Thou long the fav\u2019rite of the healing powers,\n Indulge, O MEAD! a well-design\u2019d essay,\n Howe\u2019er imperfect: and permit that I 60\n My little knowledge with my country share,\n Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock,\n And with new graces dignify the theme.\n\n YE who amid this feverish world would wear\n A body free of pain, of cares a mind; 65\n Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air;\n Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke\n And volatile corruption, from the dead,\n The dying, sickning, and the living world\n Exhal\u2019d, to sully heaven\u2019s transparent dome 70\n With dim mortality. It is not air\n That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine,\n Sated with exhalations rank and fell,\n The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw\n Of nature; when from shape and texture she 75\n Relapses into fighting elements:\n It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass\n Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things.\n Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath,\n With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more 80\n The solid frame than simple moisture can.\n Besides, immur\u2019d in many a sullen bay\n That never felt the freshness of the breeze,\n This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows\n With sickly rest: and (tho\u2019 the lungs abhor 85\n To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)\n Did not the acid vigour of the mine,\n Roll\u2019d from so many thundring chimneys, tame\n The putrid salts that overswarm the sky;\n This caustick venom would perhaps corrode 90\n Those tender cells that draw the vital air,\n In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew\u2019d;\n Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn\n In countless pores o\u2019er all the pervious skin,\n Imbib\u2019d, would poison the balsamic blood, 95\n And rouse the heart to every fever\u2019s rage.\n While yet you breathe, away! the rural wilds\n Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales,\n The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze\n That fans the ever undulating sky; 100\n A kindly sky! whose fost\u2019ring power regales\n Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.\n Find then some woodland scene where nature smiles\n Benign, where all her honest children thrive.\n To us there wants not many a happy seat; 105\n Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise\n We hardly fix, bewilder\u2019d in our choice.\n See where enthron\u2019d in adamantine state,\n Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits;\n There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove 110\n Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where\n Broader she laves fair Richmond\u2019s green retreats,\n (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise\n Rural or gay.) O! from the summer\u2019s rage\n O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides 115\n Umbrageous Ham! But if the busy town\n Attract thee still to toil for power or gold,\n Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess\n In Hampstead, courted by the western wind;\n Or Greenwich, waving o\u2019er the winding flood; 120\n Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds\n Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil\u2019d.\n Green rise the Kentish hills in chearful air;\n But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads\n Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet. 125\n For on a rustic throne of dewy turf,\n With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,\n Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend\n Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force\n Compress\u2019d the slothful Naiad of the fens. 130\n From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest,\n With feverish blasts subdues the sick\u2019ning land:\n Cold tremors come, and mighty love of rest,\n Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains\n That sting the burden\u2019d brows, fatigue the loins, 135\n And rack the joints, and every torpid limb;\n Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats\n O\u2019erflow; a short relief from former ills.\n Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine;\n The vigour sinks, the habit melts away; 140\n The chearful, pure and animated bloom\n Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy\n Devour\u2019d, in sallow melancholy clad.\n And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath,\n Resigns them to the furies of her train; 145\n The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend\n Ting\u2019d with her own accumulated gall.\n\n In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain\n Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake;\n Where many lazy muddy rivers flow: 150\n Nor for the wealth that all the Indies roll\n Fix near the marshy margin of the main.\n For from the humid soil, and watry reign,\n Eternal vapours rise; the spungy air\n For ever weeps; or, turgid with the weight 155\n Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down.\n Skies such as these let every mortal shun\n Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout,\n Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh;\n Or any other injury that grows 160\n From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung,\n Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood\n In languid eddies loitering into phlegm.\n\n Yet not alone from humid skies we pine;\n For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven, 165\n That winnows into dust the blasted downs,\n Bare and extended wide without a stream,\n Too fast imbibes th\u2019 attenuated lymph\n Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales.\n The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay 170\n Their flexible vibrations; or inflam\u2019d,\n Their tender ever-moving structure thaws.\n Spoil\u2019d of its limpid vehicle, the blood\n A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide\n That slow as Lethe wanders thro\u2019 the veins, 175\n Unactive in the services of life,\n Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro\u2019\n The secret mazy channels of the brain.\n The melancholic fiend, (that worst despair\n Of physic) hence the rust-complexion\u2019d man 180\n Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain\n Too stretch\u2019d a tone: And hence in climes adust\n So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves,\n And burning fevers glow with double rage.\n\n Fly, if you can, these violent extremes 185\n Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry.\n But as the power of chusing is deny\u2019d\n To half mankind, a further task ensues;\n How best to mitigate these fell extreams,\n How breathe unhurt the withering element, 190\n Or hazy atmosphere: Tho\u2019 custom moulds\n To every clime the soft Promethean clay;\n And he who first the fogs of Essex breath\u2019d\n (So kind is native air) may in the fens\n Of Essex from inveterate ills revive 195\n At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught.\n But if the raw and oozy heaven offend,\n Correct the soil, and dry the sources up\n Of watry exhalation; wide and deep\n Conduct your trenches thro\u2019 the spouting bog; 200\n Solicitous, with all your winding arts,\n Betray th\u2019 unwilling lake into the stream;\n And weed the forest, and invoke the winds\n To break the toils where strangled vapours lie;\n Or thro\u2019 the thickets send the crackling flames. 205\n Mean time, at home with chearful fires dispel\n The humid air: And let your table smoke\n With solid roast or bak\u2019d; or what the herds\n Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds\n Yield to the toilsom pleasures of the chase. 210\n Generous your wine, the boast of rip\u2019ning years,\n But frugal be your cups; the languid frame,\n Vapid and sunk from yesterday\u2019s debauch,\n Shrinks from the cold embrace of watry heavens.\n But neither these, nor all Apollo\u2019s arts, 215\n Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky,\n Unless with exercise and manly toil\n You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood.\n The fat\u2019ning clime let all the sons of ease\n Avoid; if indolence would wish to live. 220\n Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year\n In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch\n The skin and lungs, and bake the thick\u2019ning blood;\n Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat,\n Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; 225\n And wake the fountains from their secret beds,\n And into lakes dilate the running stream.\n Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool,\n The moist relaxing vegetable store\n Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied 230\n By bleeding life, be gently wasted down,\n By soft decoction and a mellowing heat,\n To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass\n You chuse, tormented in the boiling wave;\n That thro\u2019 the thirsty channels of the blood 235\n A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow.\n The fragrant dairy from its cool recess\n Its nectar acid or benign will pour\n To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl\n Of keen Sherbet the fickle taste relieve. 240\n For with the viscous blood the simple stream\n Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups\n Oft dissipate more moisture than they give.\n Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls\n His horrors o\u2019er the world, thou may\u2019st indulge 245\n In feasts more genial, and impatient broach\n The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air\n Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts\n Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme.\n Steep\u2019d in continual rains, or with raw fogs 250\n Bedew\u2019d, our seasons droop; incumbent still\n A ponderous heaven o\u2019erwhelms the sinking soul.\n Lab\u2019ring with storms in heapy mountains rise\n Th\u2019 imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades\n Had left the dungeon of eternal night, 255\n Till black with thunder all the south descends.\n Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge\n Our melting clime; except the baleful east\n Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks\n The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk 260\n Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene.\n Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes\n This dismal change! The brooding elements\n Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath,\n Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? 265\n Or is it fix\u2019d in the Decrees above\n That lofty Albion melt into the main?\n Indulgent nature! O dissolve this gloom!\n Bind in eternal adamant the winds\n That drown or wither: Give the genial west 270\n To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north:\n And may once more the circling seasons rule\n The year; not mix in every monstrous day.\n\n Mean time, the moist malignity to shun\n Of burthen\u2019d skies; mark where the dry champain 275\n Swells into chearful hills; where Marjoram\n And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air;\n And where the Cynorrhodon[2] with the rose\n For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil\n Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes. 280\n There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep\n Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires.\n And let them see the winter morn arise,\n The summer evening blushing in the west;\n While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind 285\n O\u2019erhung, defends you from the blust\u2019ring north,\n And bleak affliction of the peevish east.\n O! when the growling winds contend, and all\n The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm,\n To sink in warm repose, and hear the din 290\n Howl o\u2019er the steady battlements, delights\n Above the luxury of vulgar sleep.\n The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain\n Of waters rushing o\u2019er the slippery rocks,\n Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest. 295\n To please the fancy is no trifling good,\n Where health is studied; for whatever moves\n The mind with calm delight, promotes the just\n And natural movements of th\u2019 harmonious frame.\n Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes 300\n The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill,\n From vale to mountain, with incessant change\n Of purest element, refreshing still\n Your airy seat, and uninfected Gods.\n Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds 305\n High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides\n Th\u2019 etherial deep with endless billows laves.\n His purer mansion nor contagious years\n Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.\n\n But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain, 310\n Involve my hill. And wheresoe\u2019er you build;\n Whether on sun-burnt Epsom, or the plains\n Wash\u2019d by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low,\n Or high Blackheath with wintry winds assail\u2019d;\n Dry be your house: but airy more than warm. 315\n Else every breath of ruder wind will strike\n Your tender body thro\u2019 with rapid pains;\n Fierce coughs will teize you, hoarseness bind your voice,\n Or moist Gravedo load your aching brows.\n These to defy, and all the fates that dwell 320\n In cloister\u2019d air tainted with steaming life,\n Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms;\n And still at azure noontide may your dome\n At every window drink the liquid sky.\n\n Need we the sunny situation here, 325\n And theatres open to the south, commend?\n Here, where the morning\u2019s misty breath infests\n More than the torrid noon? How sickly grow,\n How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales\n That, circled round with the gigantic heap 330\n Of mountains, never felt, nor never hope\n To feel, the genial vigor of the sun!\n While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames\n The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows\n The tender lily, languishingly sweet; 335\n O\u2019er every hedge the wanton woodbine roves,\n And autumn ripens in the summer\u2019s ray.\n Nor less the warmer living tribes demand\n The fost\u2019ring sun: whose energy divine\n Dwells not in mortal fire; whose generous heat 340\n Glows thro\u2019 the mass of grosser elements,\n And kindles into life the pond\u2019rous spheres.\n Chear\u2019d by thy kind invigorating warmth,\n We court thy beams, great majesty of day!\n If not the soul, the regent of this world, 345\n First born of heaven, and only less than God!\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nBOOK II.\n\nDIET.\n\n\n Enough of air. A desart subject now,\n Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight.\n A barren waste, where not a garland grows\n To bind the muse\u2019s brow; not even a proud\n Stupendous solitude frowns o\u2019er the heath, 5\n To rouse a noble horror in the soul:\n But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads\n Thro\u2019 endless labyrinths the devious feet.\n Farewel, etherial fields! the humbler arts\n Of life; the table and the homely Gods, 10\n Demand my song. Elysian gales adieu!\n\n The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow,\n The generous stream that waters every part,\n And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys\n To every particle that moves or lives; 15\n This vital fluid, thro\u2019 unnumber\u2019d tubes\n Pour\u2019d by the heart, and to the heart again\n Refunded; scourg\u2019d for ever round and round,\n Enrag\u2019d with heat and toil, at last forgets\n Its balmy nature; virulent and thin 20\n It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates\n Are open to its flight, it would destroy\n The parts it cherish\u2019d and repair\u2019d before.\n Besides, the flexible and tender tubes\n Melt in the mildest, most nectareous tide 25\n That ripening nature rolls; as in the stream\n Its crumbling banks; but what the vital force\n Of plastic fluids hourly batters down,\n That very force, those plastic particles\n Rebuild: So mutable the state of man. 30\n For this the watchful appetite was giv\u2019n,\n Daily with fresh materials to repair\n This unavoidable expence of life,\n This necessary waste of flesh and blood.\n Hence the concoctive powers, with various art, 35\n Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle;\n The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide\n To liquors, which thro\u2019 finer arteries\n To different parts their winding course pursue;\n To try new changes, and new forms put on, 40\n Or for the public, or some private use.\n\n Nothing so foreign but th\u2019 athletic hind\n Can labour into blood. The hungry meal\n Alone he fears, or aliments too thin,\n By violent powers too easily subdu\u2019d, 45\n Too soon expell\u2019d. His daily labour thaws,\n To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass\n That salt can harden, or the smoke of years;\n Nor does his gorge the rancid bacon rue,\n Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste 50\n Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay\n Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste\n With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day!\n Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid\n The full repast; and let sagacious age 55\n Grow wiser, lesson\u2019d by the dropping teeth.\n\n Half subtiliz\u2019d to chyle, the liquid food\n Readiest obeys th\u2019 assimilating powers;\n And soon the tender vegetable mass\n Relents; and soon the young of those that tread 60\n The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss,\n Or pathless sky. And if the Steer must fall,\n In youth and vigor glorious let him die;\n Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails,\n Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke. 65\n Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease,\n Indulge the veteran Ox; but wiser thou,\n From the bleak mountain or the barren downs,\n Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed;\n A race of purer blood, with exercise 70\n Refin\u2019d and scanty fare: For, old or young,\n The stall\u2019d are never healthy; nor the cramm\u2019d.\n Not all the culinary arts can tame,\n To wholsome food, th\u2019 abominable growth\n Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste 75\n Rejects like bane such loathsome lusciousness.\n The languid stomach curses even the pure\n Delicious fat, and all the race of oil;\n For more the oily aliments relax\n Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph 80\n (Fond to incorporate with all it meets)\n Coily they mix; and shun with slippery wiles\n The wooed embrace. Th\u2019 irresoluble oil,\n So gentle late and blandishing, in floods\n Of rancid bile o\u2019erflows: What tumults hence, 85\n What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.\n Chuse leaner viands, ye of jovial make!\n Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life\n Your cumbrous clay; nor on th\u2019 enfeebling down,\n Irresolute, protract the morning hours. 90\n But let the man, whose bones are thinly clad,\n With chearful ease, and succulent repast\n Improve his slender habit. Each extreme\n From the blest mean of sanity departs.\n\n I could relate what table this demands, 95\n Or that complexion; what the various powers\n Of various foods: But fifty years would roll,\n And fifty more, before the tale were done.\n Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange,\n Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display\u2019d, 100\n Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen;\n Which finds a poison in the food that most\n The temp\u2019rature affects. There are, whose blood\n Impetuous rages thro\u2019 the turgid veins,\n Who better bear the fiery fruits of Ind, 105\n Than the moist Melon, or pale Cucumber.\n Of chilly nature others fly the board\n Supply\u2019d with slaughter, and the vernal pow\u2019rs\n For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore.\n Some even the generous nutriment detest 110\n Which, in the shell, the sleeping Embryo rears.\n Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts\n Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:\n The balmy quintescence of every flower,\n And every grateful herb that decks the spring; 115\n The fost\u2019ring dew of tender sprouting life;\n The best reflection of declining age;\n The kind restorative of those who lie\n Half-dead and panting, from the doubtful strife\n Of nature struggling in the grasp of death. 120\n Try all the bounties of this fertile globe,\n There is not such a salutary food,\n As suits with every stomach. But (except,\n Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl,\n And boil\u2019d and bak\u2019d, you hesitate by which 125\n You sunk oppress\u2019d, or whether not by all;)\n Taught by experience soon you may discern\n What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates\n That lull the sicken\u2019d appetite too long;\n Or heave with feverish flushings all the face, 130\n Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue;\n Or much diminish or too much increase\n Th\u2019 expence which nature\u2019s wise oeconomy,\n Without or waste or avarice, maintains.\n Such cates abjur\u2019d, let prouling hunger loose, 135\n And bid the curious palate roam at will;\n They scarce can err amid the various stores\n That burst the teeming entrails of the world.\n\n Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king\n Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives: 140\n The tyger, form\u2019d alike to cruel meals,\n Would at the manger starve: Of milder seeds,\n The generous horse to herbage and to grain\n Confines his wish; tho\u2019 fabling Greece resound\n The Thracian steeds with human carnage wild. 145\n Prompted by instinct\u2019s never-erring power,\n Each creature knows its proper aliment;\n But man, th\u2019 inhabitant of every clime,\n With all the commoners of nature feeds.\n Directed, bounded, by this pow\u2019r within, 150\n Their cravings are well-aim\u2019d: Voluptous man\n Is by superior faculties misled;\n Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy.\n Sated with nature\u2019s boons, what thousands seek,\n With dishes tortur\u2019d from their native taste, 155\n And mad variety, to spur beyond\n Its wiser will the jaded appetite!\n Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste;\n And know, that temperance is true luxury.\n Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim. 160\n Dismiss your parasites, who praise for hire;\n And earn the fair esteem of honest men,\n Whose praise is fame. Form\u2019d of such clay as yours,\n The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates.\n Even modest want may bless your hand unseen, 165\n Tho\u2019 hush\u2019d in patient wretchedness at home.\n Is there no virgin, grac\u2019d with every charm\n But that which binds the mercenary vow?\n No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom\n Unfoster\u2019d sickens in the barren shade? 170\n No worthy man, by fortune\u2019s random blows,\n Or by a heart too generous and humane,\n Constrain\u2019d to leave his happy natal seat,\n And sigh for wants more bitter than his own?\n There are, while human miseries abound, 175\n A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,\n Without one fool or flatterer at your board,\n Without one hour of sickness or disgust.\n\n But other ills th\u2019 ambiguous feast pursue,\n Besides provoking the lascivious taste. 180\n Such various foods, tho\u2019 harmless each alone,\n Each other violate; and oft we see\n What strife is brew\u2019d, and what pernicious bane,\n From combinations of innoxious things.\n Th\u2019 unbounded taste I mean not to confine 185\n To hermit\u2019s diet, needlessly severe.\n But would you long the sweets of health enjoy,\n Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal\n Exhaust not half the bounties of the year,\n And of each realm. It matters not mean while 190\n How much to morrow differ from to day;\n So far indulge: \u2019tis fit, besides, that man,\n To change obnoxious, be to change inur\u2019d.\n But stay the curious appetite, and taste\n With caution fruits you never tried before. 195\n For want of use the kindest aliment\n Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage\n Of poison to mild amity with life.\n\n So heav\u2019n has form\u2019d us to the general taste\n Of all its gifts; so custom has improv\u2019d 200\n This bent of nature; that few simple foods,\n Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield,\n But by excess offend. Beyond the sense\n Of light refection, at the genial board\n Indulge not often; nor protract the feast 205\n To dull satiety; till soft and slow\n A drowzy death creeps on, th\u2019 expansive soul\n Oppress\u2019d, and smother\u2019d the celestial fire.\n The stomach, urg\u2019d beyond its active tone,\n Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues 210\n The softest food: unfinish\u2019d and deprav\u2019d,\n The chyle, in all its future wand\u2019rings, owns\n Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams\n So to be clear\u2019d, but foulness will remain.\n To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt 215\n Th\u2019 unripen\u2019d grape? Or what mechanic skill\n From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold?\n Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund\n Of plagues: but more immedicable ills\n Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows 220\n How to disburden the too tumid veins,\n Even how to ripen the half-labour\u2019d blood;\n But to unlock the elemental tubes,\n Collaps\u2019d and shrunk with long inanity,\n And with balsamic nutriment repair 225\n The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid\n Old age grow green, and wear a second spring;\n Or the tall ash, long ravish\u2019d from the soil,\n Thro\u2019 wither\u2019d veins imbibe the vernal dew.\n When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait 230\n Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain:\n For the keen appetite will feast beyond\n What nature well can bear; and one extreme\n Ne\u2019er without danger meets its own reverse.\n Too greedily th\u2019 exhausted veins absorb 235\n The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers\n Oft to th\u2019 extinction of the vital flame.\n To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege\n And famine humbled, may this verse be borne;\n And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds, 240\n Long toss\u2019d and famish\u2019d on the wintry main;\n The war shook off, or hospitable shore\n Attain\u2019d, with temperance bear the shock of joy;\n Nor crown with festive rites th\u2019 auspicious day:\n Such feast might prove more fatal than the waves, 245\n Than war, or famine. While the vital fire\n Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on;\n But prudently foment the wandering spark\n With what the soonest feels its kindred touch:\n Be frugal ev\u2019n of that: a little give 250\n At first; that kindled, add a little more;\n Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame\n Reviv\u2019d, with all its wonted vigor glows.\n\n But tho\u2019 the two (the full and the jejune)\n Extremes have each their vice; it much avails 255\n Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow\n From this to that: So nature learns to bear\n Whatever chance or headlong appetite\n May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues\n The cruder clods by sloth or luxury 260\n Collected; and unloads the wheels of life.\n Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast\n Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lours;\n Then is a time to shun the tempting board,\n Were it your natal or your nuptial day. 265\n Perhaps a fast so seasonable starves\n The latent seeds of woe, which rooted once\n Might cost you labour. But the day return\u2019d\n Of festal luxury, the wise indulge\n Most in the tender vegetable breed: 270\n Then chiefly when the summer\u2019s beams inflame\n The brazen heavens; or angry Syrius sheds\n A feverish taint thro\u2019 the still gulph of air.\n The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup\n From the fresh dairy-virgin\u2019s liberal hand, 275\n Will save your head from harm, tho\u2019 round the world\n The dreaded Causos[3] roll his wasteful fires.\n Pale humid Winter loves the generous board.\n The meal more copious, and a warmer fare;\n And longs, with old wood and old wine, to cheer 280\n His quaking heart. The seasons which divide\n Th\u2019 empires of heat and cold; by neither claim\u2019d.\n Influenc\u2019d by both; a middle regimen\n Impose. Thro\u2019 autumn\u2019s languishing domain\n Descending, nature by degrees invites 285\n To glowing luxury. But from the depth\n Of winter, when th\u2019 invigorated year\n Emerges; when Favonius flush\u2019d with love,\n Toyful and young, in every breeze descends\n More warm and wanton on his kindling bride; 290\n Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks;\n And learn, with wise humanity, to check\n The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits\n A various offspring to th\u2019 indulgent sky:\n Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand 295\n The prone creation; yields what once suffic\u2019d\n Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young;\n E\u2019re yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seiz\u2019d\n The human breast. Each rolling month matures\n The food that suits it most; so does each clime. 300\n\n Far in the horrid realms of winter, where\n Th\u2019 establish\u2019d ocean heaps a monstrous waste\n Of shining rocks and mountains to the pole;\n There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants\n Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother, 305\n Regards not. On the waste of iron fields,\n Untam\u2019d, untractable, no harvests wave:\n Pomona hates them, and the clownish God\n Who tends the garden. In this frozen world\n Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal 310\n Is earn\u2019d with ease; for here the fruitful spawn\n Of Ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board\n With generous fare and luxury profuse.\n These are their bread, the only bread they know;\n These, and their willing slave the deer, that crops 315\n The shrubby herbage on their meager hills.\n Girt by the burning zone, not thus the south\n Her swarthy sons, in either Ind, maintains:\n Or thirsty Lybia; from whose fervid loins\n The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams 320\n Th\u2019 affrighted wilderness. The mountain herd,\n Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords;\n Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce,\n So perfect, so delicious, as the stores\n Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood 325\n Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain\n Its tumid fervor and tempestuous course;\n Kind nature tempts not to such gifts as these.\n But here in livid ripeness melts the grape;\n Here, finish\u2019d by invigorating suns, 330\n Thro\u2019 the green shade the golden Orange glows;\n Spontaneous here the turgid Melon yields\n A generous pulp; the Coco swells on high\n With milky riches; and in horrid mail\n The soft Ananas wraps its tender sweets. 335\n Earth\u2019s vaunted progeny: In ruder air\n Too coy to flourish, even to proud to live;\n Or hardly rais\u2019d by artificial fire\n To vapid life. Here with a mother\u2019s smile\n Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn. 340\n Here buxom Ceres reigns: Th\u2019 autumnal sea\n In boundless billows fluctuates o\u2019er their plains.\n What suits the climate best, what suits the men,\n Nature profuses most, and most the taste\n Demands. The fountain, edg\u2019d with racy wine 345\n Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls.\n The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs\n Supports in else intolerable air:\n While the cool Palm, the Plantain, and the grove\n That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage 350\n The torrid hell that beams upon their heads.\n\n Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;\n Now let me wander thro\u2019 your gelid reign.\n I burn to view th\u2019 enthusiastic wilds\n By mortal else untrod. I hear the din 355\n Of waters thundering o\u2019er the ruin\u2019d cliffs.\n With holy rev\u2019rence I approach the rocks\n Whence glide the streams renown\u2019d in ancient song.\n Here from the desart down the rumbling steep\n First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po 360\n In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves\n A mighty flood to water half the East;\n And there, in Gothic solitude reclin\u2019d,\n The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn.\n What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades 365\n Enwarp these infant floods! Thro\u2019 every nerve\n A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear\n Glides o\u2019er my frame. The forest deepens round;\n And more gigantic still th\u2019 impending trees\n Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. 370\n Are these the confines of some fairy world?\n A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds\n What unknown nations? If indeed beyond\n Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,\n To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain, 375\n That subterraneous way? Propitious maids,\n Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread\n This trembling ground. The task remains to sing\n Your gifts, (so P\u00e6on, so the powers of health\n Command) to praise your chrystal element: 380\n The chief ingredient in heaven\u2019s various works;\n Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,\n Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;\n The vehicle, the source, of nutriment\n And life, to all that vegitate or live. 385\n\n O comfortable streams? With eager lips\n And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff\n New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins.\n No warmer cups the rural ages knew;\n None warmer sought the sires of human-kind. 390\n Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days\n Felt not th\u2019 alternate fits of feverish mirth,\n And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas\u2019d,\n They knew no pains but what the tender soul\n With pleasure yields to, and would ne\u2019er forget. 395\n Blest with divine immunity from ails,\n Long centuries they liv\u2019d; their only fate\n Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.\n Oh! could those worthies from the world of Gods\n Return to visit their degenerate sons, 400\n How would they scorn the joys of modern time,\n With all our art and toil improv\u2019d to pain!\n Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury,\n And luxury on sloth begot disease.\n\n Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain 405\n The choice of water. Thus the Coan[4] sage\n Opin\u2019d, and thus the learn\u2019d of every school.\n What least of foreign principles partakes\n Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch\n Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air; 410\n The most insipid; the most void of smell.\n Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides\n Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale\n For ever boil, alike of winter frosts\n And summer\u2019s heat secure. The lucid stream, 415\n O\u2019er rocks resounding, or for many a mile\n Hurl\u2019d down the pebbly channel, wholesome yields\n And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,\n And half the mountains melt into the tide.\n Tho\u2019 thirst were ne\u2019er so resolute, avoid 420\n The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods\n As fill from Lethe Belgia\u2019s slow canals;\n (With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;\n Squalid with generation, and the birth\n Of little monsters;) till the power of fire 425\n Has from profane embraces disengag\u2019d\n The violated lymph. The virgin stream\n In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.\n\n Nothing like simple element dilutes\n The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow. 430\n But where the stomach, indolently given,\n Toys with its duty, animate with wine\n Th\u2019 insipid stream: Tho\u2019 golden Ceres yields\n A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught;\n Perhaps more active. Wine unmix\u2019d, and all 435\n The gluey floods that from the vex\u2019d abyss\n Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught,\n And furious with intoxicating fire;\n Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw\u2019d\n Th\u2019 embodied mass. You see what countless years, 450\n Embalm\u2019d in fiery quintescence of wine,\n The puny wonders of the reptile world,\n The tender rudiments of life, the slim\n Unrav\u2019lings of minute anatomy,\n Maintain their texture, and unchang\u2019d remain! 455\n\n We curse not wine: The vile excess we blame;\n More fruitful, than th\u2019 accumulated board,\n Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught\n Faster and surer swells the vital tide;\n And with more active poison, than the floods 460\n Of grosser crudity convey, pervades\n The far-remote meanders of our frame.\n Ah! sly deceiver! Branded o\u2019er and o\u2019er,\n Yet still believ\u2019d! Exulting o\u2019er the wreck\n Of sober Vows! But the Parnassian maids 465\n Another time perhaps shall sing the joys,\n The fatal charms, the many woes of wine;\n Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers.\n\n Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,\n Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife, 470\n Rous\u2019d by the rare debauch, subdues, expells\n The loitering crudities, that burthen life;\n And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears\n Th\u2019 obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world\n Is full of chances, which by habit\u2019s power 475\n To learn to bear is easier than to shun.\n Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,\n Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine\n To moisten well the thirsty suffrages;\n Say how, unseason\u2019d to the midnight frays 480\n Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend\n With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur\u2019d?\n Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees:\n By slow degrees the liberal arts are won;\n And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth 485\n The brows of care, indulge your festive vein\n In cups by well-inform\u2019d experience found\n The least your bane; and only with your friends.\n There are sweet follies, frailties to be seen\n By friends alone, and men of generous minds. 490\n\n Oh! seldom may the fated hours return\n Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste,\n Except when life declines, even sober cups.\n Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,\n With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, 495\n The sapless habit daily to bedew,\n And give the hesitating wheels of life\n Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys;\n And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows,\n To squander the reliefs of age and pain? 500\n\n What dext\u2019rous thousands just within the goal\n Of wild debauch direct their nightly course!\n Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days,\n No morning admonitions shock the head.\n But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace, 505\n And that incurable disease old age,\n In youthful bodies more severely felt,\n More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime:\n Except kind nature by some hasty blow\n Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate\u2019er 510\n Beyond its natural fervor hurries on\n The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl,\n High-season\u2019d fare, or exercise to toil\n Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir\u2019d life,\n And sows the temples with untimely snow.\n When life is new, the ductile fibres feel 515\n The heart\u2019s increasing force; and, day by day,\n The growth advances; till the larger tubes,\n Acquiring (from their elemental[5] veins,\n Condens\u2019d to solid chords) a firmer tone,\n Sustain, and just sustain, th\u2019 impetuous blood. 520\n Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse\n And pressure, still the great destroy the small;\n Still with the ruins of the small grow strong.\n Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force\n Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes; 525\n Its various functions vigorously are plied\n By strong machinery; and in solid health\n The man confirm\u2019d long triumphs o\u2019er disease.\n But the full ocean ebbs: There is a point,\n By nature fix\u2019d, whence life must downwards tend. 530\n For still the beating tide consolidates\n The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still,\n To the weak throbbings of th\u2019 enfeebled heart.\n This languishing, these strengthning by degrees\n To hard unyielding unelastic bone, 535\n Thro\u2019 tedious channels the congealing flood\n Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on;\n It loiters still: And now it stirs no more.\n This is the period few attain; the death\n Of nature: Thus (so heav\u2019n ordain\u2019d it) life 540\n Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang\u2019d,\n Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate;\n And Homer live immortal as his song.\n\n What does not fade? The tower that long had stood\n The crush of thunder, and the warring winds, 545\n Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,\n Now hangs in doubtful ruins o\u2019er its base.\n And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass,\n Descend; the Babylonian spires are sunk;\n Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down. 550\n Time shakes the liable tyranny of thrones,\n And tottering empires rush by their own weight.\n This huge rotundity we tread grows old;\n And all those worlds that roll around the sun,\n The sun himself, shall die; and ancient Night 555\n Again involve the desolate abyss:\n Till the great FATHER thro\u2019 the lifeless gloom\n Extend his arm to light another world,\n And bid new planets roll by other laws.\n For thro\u2019 the regions of unbounded space, 560\n Where unconfin\u2019d omnipotence has room,\n BEING, in various systems, fluctuates still\n Between creation and abhorr\u2019d decay;\n It ever did; perhaps and ever will.\n New worlds are still emerging from the deep; 565\n The old descending, in their turns to rise.\n\n\n\n\nBOOK III.\n\nEXERCISE.\n\n\n Thro\u2019 various toils th\u2019 adventurous muse has past;\n But half the toil, and more than half, remains.\n Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song;\n Plain, and of little ornament; and I\n But little practis\u2019d in th\u2019 Aonian arts. 5\n Yet not in vain such labours have we tried,\n If ought these lays the fickle health confirm.\n To you, ye delicate, I write; for you\n I tame my youth to philosophic cares,\n And grow still paler by the midnight lamps. 10\n Not to debilitate with timorous rules\n A hardy frame; nor needlessly to brave\n Unglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength;\n Is all the lesson that in wholsome years\n Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow\u2019d 15\n Who would with warm effeminacy nurse\n The thriving oak, which on the mountain\u2019s brow\n Bears all the blasts that sweep the wintry heav\u2019n.\n\n Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils\n In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies: 20\n Save but the grain from mildews and the flood,\n Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend.\n He knows no laws by Esculapius given;\n He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs\n Infest, nor those envenom\u2019d shafts that fly 25\n When rabid Sirius fires th\u2019 autumnal noon.\n His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,\n Robust with labour, and by custom steel\u2019d\n To every casualty of varied life;\n Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast, 30\n And uninfected breaths the mortal South.\n\n Such the reward of rude and sober life;\n Of labour such. By health the peasant\u2019s toil\n Is well repaid; if exercise were pain\n Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like these 35\n Laconia nurs\u2019d of old her hardy sons;\n And Rome\u2019s unconquer\u2019d legions urg\u2019d their way,\n Unhurt, thro\u2019 every toil in every clime.\n\n Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves\n Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone; 40\n The greener juices are by toil subdu\u2019d,\n Mellow\u2019d, and subtilis\u2019d; the vapid old\n Expell\u2019d, and all the rancor of the blood.\n Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms\n Of nature and the year; come, let us stray 45\n Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk:\n Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan\n The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm,\n And shed a charming languor o\u2019er the soul.\n Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost 50\n The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth\n Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus\u2019 blasts\n This way and that convolve the lab\u2019ring woods.\n My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain\n Or fogs relent, no season should confine 55\n Or to the cloister\u2019d gallery or arcade.\n Go, climb the mountain; from th\u2019 etherial source\n Imbibe the recent gale. The chearful morn\n Beams o\u2019er the hills; go, mount th\u2019 exulting steed,\n Already, see, the deep-mouth\u2019d beagles catch 60\n The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport\n Intent, with emulous impatience try\n Each doubtful track. Or, if a nobler prey\n Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer;\n And thro\u2019 its deepest solitudes awake 65\n The vocal forest with the jovial horn.\n\n But if the breathless chase o\u2019er hill and dale\n Exceed your strength; a sport of less fatigue,\n Not less delightful, the prolific stream\n Affords. The chrystal rivulet, that o\u2019er 70\n A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,\n Swarms with the silver fry. Such, thro\u2019 the bounds\n Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent;\n Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such\n The Esk, o\u2019erhung with woods; and such the stream 75\n On whole Arcadian banks I first drew air,\n Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays\n Tun\u2019d to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,\n Unknown in song: Tho\u2019 not a purer stream,\n Thro\u2019 meads more flow\u2019ry, or more romantic groves, 80\n Rolls toward the western main. Hail sacred flood!\n May still thy hospitable swains be blest\n In rural innocence; thy mountains still\n Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods\n For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay 85\n With painted meadows, and the golden grain!\n Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new,\n Sportive and petulant, and charm\u2019d with toys,\n In thy transparent eddies have I lav\u2019d:\n Oft trac\u2019d with patient steps thy fairy banks, 90\n With the well-imitated fly to hook\n The eager trout, and with the slender line\n And yielding rod sollicite to the shore\n The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds\n And tepid gales obscur\u2019d the ruffled pool, 95\n And from the deeps call\u2019d forth the wanton swarms.\n\n Form\u2019d on the Samian school, or those of Ind,\n There are who think these pastimes scarce humane.\n Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)\n His life is pure that wears no fouler stains. 100\n But if thro\u2019 genuine tenderness of heart,\n Or secret want of relish for the game,\n You shun the glories of the chace, nor care\n To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields\n A soft amusement, an humane delight. 105\n To raise th\u2019 insipid nature of the ground;\n Or tame its savage genius to the grace\n Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems\n The amiable result of happy chance,\n Is to create; and gives a god-like joy, 110\n Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain\n To check the lawless riot of the trees,\n To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.\n O happy he! whom, when his years decline,\n (His fortune and his fame by worthy means 115\n Attain\u2019d, and equal to his moderate mind;\n His life approv\u2019d by all the wise and good,\n Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves\n Of Epicurus, from this stormy world,\n Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares 120\n Absolv\u2019d, and sacred from the selfish crowd.\n Happiest of men! if the same soil invites\n A chosen few, companions of his youth,\n Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends;\n With whom in easy commerce to pursue 125\n Nature\u2019s free charms, and vie for sylvan fame:\n A fair ambition; void of strife or guile,\n Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.\n Who plans th\u2019 enchanted garden, who directs\n The visto best, and best conducts the stream; 130\n Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;\n Whom first the welcome spring salutes; who shews\n The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms,\n Of Flora; who best gives Pomona\u2019s juice\n To match the sprightly genius of Champain. 135\n Thrice happy days! in rural business past.\n Blest winter nights! when, as the genial fire\n Chears the wide hall, his cordial family\n With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,\n And pleasing talk that starts no timerous fame, 140\n With witless wantoness to hunt it down:\n Or thro\u2019 the fairy-land of tale or song\n Delighted wander, in fictitious fates\n Engag\u2019d, and all that strikes humanity;\n Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour 145\n Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve,\n His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid\n His festal roof; while, o\u2019er the light repast,\n And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;\n And, thro\u2019 the maze of conversation, trace 150\n Whate\u2019er amuses or improves the mind.\n Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste\n The native zest and flavour of the fruit,\n Where sense grows wild, and takes of no manure)\n The decent, honest, chearful husbandman 155\n Should drown his labours in my friendly bowl;\n And at my table find himself at home.\n\n Whate\u2019er you study, in whate\u2019er you sweat,\n Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;\n The tennis some; and some the graceful dance. 160\n Others, more hardy, range the purple heath,\n Or naked stubble; where from field to field\n The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight;\n Eager amid the rising cloud to pour\n The gun\u2019s unerring thunder: And there are 165\n Whom still the meed[6] of the green archer charms.\n He chuses best, whose labour entertains\n His vacant fancy most: The toil you hate\n Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.\n\n As beauty still has blemish; and the mind 170\n The most accomplish\u2019d its imperfect side;\n Few bodies are there of that happy mould\n But some one part is weaker than the rest:\n The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load,\n Or the chest labours. These assiduously, 175\n But gently, in their proper arts employ\u2019d,\n Acquire a vigor and elastic spring\n To which they were not born. But weaker parts\n Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.\n\n Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves 180\n Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire.\n The prudent, even in every moderate walk,\n At first but saunter; and by slow degrees\n Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise\n Well knows the master of the flying steed. 185\n First from the goal the manag\u2019d coursers play\n On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth\n Repress their foamy pride; but every breath\n The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells;\n Till all the fiery mettle has its way, 190\n And the thick thunder hurries o\u2019er the plain.\n When all at once from indolence to toil\n You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock\n Are tir\u2019d and crack\u2019d, before their unctuous coats,\n Compress\u2019d, can pour the lubricating balm. 195\n Besides, collected in the passive veins,\n The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,\n O\u2019erpowers the heart, and deluges the lungs\n With dangerous inundation: Oft the source\n Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood, 200\n Asthma, and feller Peripneumonie[7],\n Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.\n\n Th\u2019 athletic fool, to whom what heav\u2019n deny\u2019d\n Of soul is well compensated in limbs,\n Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels 205\n His vegetation and brute force decay.\n The men of better clay and finer mould\n Know nature, feel the human dignity;\n And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes.\n Pursued prolixly, even the gentlest toil 210\n Is waste of health: Repose by small fatigue\n Is earn\u2019d; and (where your habit is not prone\n To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows.\n The fine and subtle spirits cost too much\n To be profus\u2019d, too much the roscid balm. 215\n But when the hard varieties of life\n You toil to learn; or try the dusty chace,\n Or the warm deeds of some important day:\n Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs\n In wish\u2019d repose, nor court the fanning gale, 220\n Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears\n Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires,\n Forbear! No other pestilence has driven\n Such myriads o\u2019er th\u2019 irremeable deep.\n Why this so fatal, the sagacious muse 225\n Thro\u2019 nature\u2019s cunning labyrinths could trace:\n But there are secrets which who knows not now,\n Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps\n Of science; and devote seven years to toil.\n Besides, I would not stun your patient ears 230\n With what it little boots you to attain.\n He knows enough, the mariner, who knows\n Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,\n What signs portend the storm: To subtler minds\n He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause 235\n Charybdis rages in th\u2019 Ionian wave;\n Whence those impetuous currents in the main,\n Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why\n The roughning deep expects the storm, as sure\n As red Orion mounts the shrowded heaven. 240\n\n In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied\n For polish\u2019d luxury and useful arts;\n All hot and reeking from th\u2019 Olympic strife,\n And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath\n Th\u2019 athletic youth relax\u2019d their weary\u2019d limbs. 245\n Soft oils bedew\u2019d them, with the grateful pow\u2019rs\n Of Nard and Cassia fraught, to sooth and heal\n The cherish\u2019d nerves. Our less voluptuous clime\n Not much invites us to such arts as these.\n \u2019Tis not for those, whom gelid skies embrace, 250\n And chilling fogs; whose perspiration feels\n Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North;\n \u2019Tis not for those to cultivate a skin\n Too soft; or teach the recremental fume\n Too fast to crowd thro\u2019 such precarious ways. 255\n For thro\u2019 the small arterial mouths, that pierce\n In endless millions the close-woven skin,\n The baser fluids in a constant stream\n Escape, and viewless melt into the winds.\n While this eternal, this most copious waste 260\n Of blood degenerate into vapid brine,\n Maintains its wonted measure; all the powers\n Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life\n With ease and pleasure move: But this restrain\u2019d\n Or more or less, so more or less you feel 265\n The functions labour. From this fatal source\n What woes descend is never to be sung.\n To take their numbers, were to count the sands\n That ride in whirlwind the parch\u2019d Lybian air;\n Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils 270\n The Baltic, thunder on the German shore.\n Subject not then, by soft emollient arts,\n This grand expence, on which your fates depend,\n To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart\n The genius of your clime: For from the blood 275\n Least fickle rise the recremental steams,\n And least obnoxious to the styptic air,\n Which breathe thro\u2019 straiter and more callous pores.\n The temper\u2019d Scythian hence, half-naked treads\n His boundless snows, nor rues th\u2019 inclement heaven; 280\n And hence our painted ancestors defied\n The East; nor curs\u2019d, like us, their fickle sky.\n\n The body moulded by the clime, indures\n Th\u2019 Equator heats, or Hyperborean frost:\n Except by habits foreign to its turn, 285\n Unwise, you counteract its forming pow\u2019r.\n Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less\n By long acquaintance: Study then your sky,\n Form to its manners your obsequious frame,\n And learn to suffer what you cannot shun. 290\n Against the rigors of a damp cold heav\u2019n\n To fortify their bodies, some frequent\n The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids,\n I praise their dauntless heart. A frame so steel\u2019d\n Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts, 295\n That breathe the Tertian or fell Rheumatism;\n The nerves so temper\u2019d never quit their tone,\n No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts.\n But all things have their bounds: And he who makes\n By daily use the kindest regimen 300\n Essential to his health, should never mix\n With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue.\n He not the safe vicissitudes of life\n Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he\n To want the known, or bear unusual things. 305\n Besides, the powerful remedies of pain\n (Since pain in spite of all our care will come)\n Should never with your prosperous days of health\n Grow too familiar: For by frequent use\n The strongest medicines lose their healing power, 310\n And even the surest poisons theirs to kill.\n\n Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach\n Parch\u2019d Mauritania, or the sultry West,\n Or the wide flood that waters Indostan,\n Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave 315\n Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free\n Th\u2019 evaporation thro\u2019 the softned skin\n May bear proportion to the swelling blood.\n So shall they \u2019scape the fever\u2019s rapid flames;\n So feel untainted the hot breath of hell. 320\n With us, the man of no complaint demands\n The warm ablution, just enough to clear\n The sluices of the skin, enough to keep\n The body sacred from indecent soil.\n Still to be pure, even did it not conduce 325\n (As much it does) to health, were greatly worth\n Your daily pains. \u2019Tis this adorns the rich;\n The want of this is poverty\u2019s worst woe:\n With this external virtue, age maintains\n A decent grace; without it, youth and charms 330\n Are loathsome. This the skilful virgin knows:\n So doubtless do your wives. For married sires,\n As well as lovers, still pretend to taste;\n Nor is it less (all prudent wives can tell)\n To lose a husband\u2019s, than a lover\u2019s heart. 335\n\n But now the hours and seasons when to toil,\n From foreign themes recall my wandering song.\n Some labour fasting, or but slightly fed,\n To lull the grinding stomach\u2019s hungry rage:\n Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame 340\n \u2019Tis wisely done. For while the thirsty veins,\n Impatient of lean penury, devour\n The treasur\u2019d oil, then is the happiest time\n To shake the lazy balsam from its cells.\n Now while the stomach from the full repast 345\n Subsides; but ere returning hunger gnaws;\n Ye leaner habits give an hour to toil:\n And ye whom no luxuriancy of growth\n Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress.\n But from the recent meal no labours please, 350\n Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial powers\n Claim all the wandering spirits to a work\n Of strong and subtle toil, and great event;\n A work of time: and you may rue the day\n You hurried, with ill-seasoned exercise, 355\n A half concocted chyle into the blood.\n The body overcharg\u2019d with unctuous phlegm\n Much toil demands: The lean elastic less.\n While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins,\n No labours are too hard: By those you \u2019scape 360\n The slow diseases of the torpid year;\n Endless to name; to one of which alone,\n To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves\n Is pleasure: Oh! from such inhuman pains\n May all be free who merit not the wheel! 365\n But from the burning Lion when the sun\n Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood\n Too much already maddens in the veins,\n And all the finer fluids thro\u2019 the skin\n Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade 370\n Reclin\u2019d, or sauntring in the lofty grove,\n No needless slight occasion should engage\n To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon.\n Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve\n To shady walks and active rural sports 375\n Invite. But, while the chilling dews descend,\n May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace\n Of humid skies: Tho\u2019 \u2019tis no vulgar joy\n To trace the horrors of the solemn wood,\n While the soft evening saddens into night: 380\n Tho\u2019 the sweet poet of the vernal groves\n Melts all the night in strains of amorous woe.\n\n The shades descend, and midnight o\u2019er the world\n Expands her sable wings. Great nature droops\n Thro\u2019 all her works. Now happy he whose toil 385\n Has o\u2019er his languid powerless limbs diffus\u2019d\n A pleasing lassitude: He not in vain\n Invokes the gentle deity of dreams.\n His powers the most voluptuously dissolve\n In soft repose: On him the balmy dews 390\n Of sleep with double nutriment descend.\n But would you sweetly waste the blank of night\n In deep oblivion; or on fancy\u2019s wings\n Visit the paradise of happy dreams,\n And waken chearful as the lively morn; 395\n Oppress not nature sinking down to rest\n With feasts too late, too solid, or too full.\n But be the first concoction half-matur\u2019d,\n Ere you to mighty indolence resign\n Your passive faculties. He from the toils 400\n And troubles of the day to heavier toil\n Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks\n Amid the clouds, or Calpe\u2019s hideous height,\n The busy d\u00e6mons hurl, or in the main\n O\u2019erwhelm, or bury struggling under ground. 405\n Not all a monarch\u2019s luxury the woes\n Can counterpoise, of that most wretched man,\n Whose nights are shaken with the frantic fits\n Of wild Orestes; whose delirious brain,\n Stung by the furies, works with poisoned thought! 410\n While pale and monstrous painting shocks the soul;\n And mangled consciousness bemoans itself\n For ever torn; and chaos floating round.\n What dreams presage, what dangers these or those\n Portend to sanity, tho\u2019 prudent seers 415\n Reveal\u2019d of old, and men of deathless fame;\n We would not to the superstitious mind\n Suggest new throbs, new vanities of fear.\n \u2019Tis ours to teach you from the peaceful night\n To banish omens, and all restless woes. 420\n\n In study some protract the silent hours,\n Which others consecrate to mirth and wine;\n And sleep till noon, and hardly live till night.\n But surely this redeems not from the shades\n One hour of life. Nor does it nought avail 425\n What season you to drowsy Morpheus give\n Of th\u2019 ever-varying circle of the day;\n Or whether, thro\u2019 the tedious winter gloom,\n You tempt the midnight or the morning damps.\n The body, fresh and vigorous from repose, 430\n Defies the early fogs: but, by the toils\n Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung,\n Weakly resists the night\u2019s unwholsome breath.\n The grand discharge, th\u2019 effusion of the skin,\n Slowly impair\u2019d, the languid maladies 435\n Creep on, and thro\u2019 the sickning functions steal.\n So, when the chilling East invades the spring,\n The delicate Narcissus pines away\n In hectic languor; and a slow disease\n Taints all the family of flowers, condemn\u2019d 440\n To cruel heav\u2019ns. But why, already prone\n To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane?\n O shame! O pity! nipt with pale Quadrille,\n And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies!\n\n By toil subdu\u2019d, the Warrior and the Hind 445\n Sleep fast and deep; their active functions soon\n With generous streams the subtle tubes supply,\n And soon the tonick irritable nerves\n Feel the fresh impulse, and awake the soul.\n The sons of indolence, with long repose, 450\n Grow torpid; and, with slowest Lethe drunk,\n Feebly and lingringly return to life,\n Blunt every sense and powerless every limb.\n Ye, prone to sleep (whom sleeping most annoys)\n On the hard mattrass or elastic couch 455\n Extend your limbs, and wean yourselves from sloth;\n Nor grudge the lean projector, of dry brain\n And springy nerves, the blandishments of down.\n Nor envy while the buried bacchanal\n Exhales his surfeit in prolixer dreams. 460\n\n He without riot, in the balmy feast\n Of life, the wants of nature has supplied\n Who rises cool, serene, and full of soul.\n But pliant nature more or less demands,\n As custom forms her; and all sudden change 465\n She hates of habit, even from bad to good.\n If faults in life, or new emergencies,\n From habits urge you by long time confirm\u2019d,\n Slow may the change arrive, and stage by stage;\n Slow as the shadow o\u2019er the dial moves, 470\n Slow as the stealing progress of the year.\n\n Observe the circling year. How unperceiv\u2019d\n Her seasons change! Behold! by slow degrees,\n Stern Winter tam\u2019d into a ruder spring;\n The ripen\u2019d Spring a milder summer glows; 475\n Departing Summer sheds Pomona\u2019s store;\n And aged Autumn brews the winter-storm.\n Slow as they come, these changes come not void\n Of mortal shocks: The cold and torrid reigns,\n The two great periods of th\u2019 important year, 480\n Are in their first approaches seldom safe:\n Funereal autumn all the sickly dread,\n And the black fates deform the lovely spring.\n He well advis\u2019d, who taught our wiser sires\n Early to borrow Muscovy\u2019s warm spoils, 485\n Ere the first frost has touch\u2019d the tender blade;\n And late resign them, tho\u2019 the wanton spring\n Should deck her charms with all her sister\u2019s rays.\n For while the effluence of the skin maintains\n Its native measure, the pleuritic Spring 490\n Glides harmless by; and Autumn, sick to death\n With sallow Quartans, no contagion breathes.\n\n I in prophetic numbers could unfold\n The omens of the year: what seasons teem\n With what diseases; what the humid South 495\n Prepares, and what the D\u00e6mon of the East:\n But you perhaps refuse the tedious song.\n Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold,\n Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you,\n Skill\u2019d to correct the vices of the sky, 500\n And taught already how to each extream\n To bend your life. But should the public bane\n Infect you, or some trespass of your own,\n Or flaw of nature hint mortality:\n Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides 505\n Along the spine, thro\u2019 all your torpid limbs;\n When first: the head throbs, or the stomach feels\n A sickly load, a weary pain the loins;\n Be Celsus call\u2019d: The fates come rushing on;\n The rapid fates admit of no delay. 510\n While wilful you, and fatally secure,\n Expect to morrow\u2019s more auspicious sun,\n The growing pest, whose infancy was weak\n And easy vanquish\u2019d, with triumphant sway\n O\u2019erpow\u2019rs your life. For want of timely care 515\n Millions have died of medicable wounds.\n\n Ah! in what perils is vain life engag\u2019d!\n What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy\n The hardiest frame! Of indolence, of toil,\n We die; of want, of superfluity. 520\n The all-surrounding heaven, the vital air,\n Is big with death. And, tho\u2019 the putrid South\n Be shut; tho\u2019 no convulsive agony\n Shake, from the deep foundations of the world,\n Th\u2019 imprisoned plagues; a secret venom oft 525\n Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.\n What livid deaths has sad Byzantium seen!\n How oft has Cairo, with a mother\u2019s woe,\n Wept o\u2019er her slaughter\u2019d sons, and lonely streets!\n Even Albion, girt with less malignant skies, 530\n Albion the poison of the Gods has drunk,\n And felt the sting of monsters all her own.\n\n Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent\n Their ancient rage, at Bosworth\u2019s purple field;\n While, for which tyrant England should receive, 535\n Her legions in incestuous murders mix\u2019d,\n And daily horrors; till the Fates were drunk\n With kindred blood by kindred hands profus\u2019d:\n Another plague of more gygantic arm\n Arose, a monster never known before 540\n Rear\u2019d from Cocytus its portentuous head.\n This rapid fury not, like other pests,\n Pursued a gradual course, but in a day\n Rush\u2019d as a storm o\u2019er half th\u2019 astonish\u2019d isle,\n And strew\u2019d with sudden carcasses the land. 545\n\n First thro\u2019 the shoulders, or whatever part\n Was seiz\u2019d the first, a fervid vapour sprung.\n With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark\n Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;\n And soon the surface caught the spreading fires. 550\n Thro\u2019 all the yielding pores the melted blood\n Gush\u2019d out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag\u2019d\n The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev\u2019d\n The stomach\u2019s anguish. With incessant toil,\n Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain, 555\n They toss\u2019d from side to side. In vain the stream\n Ran full and clear, they burnt and thirsted still.\n The restless arteries with rapid blood\n Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly\n The breath was fetch\u2019d, and with huge lab\u2019rings heav\u2019d. 560\n At last a heavy pain oppress\u2019d the head,\n A wild delirium came; their weeping friends\n Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.\n Harass\u2019d with toil on toil, the sinking powers\n Lay prostrate and o\u2019erthrown; a ponderous sleep 565\n Wrapt all the senses up: They slept and died.\n\n In some a gentle horror crept at first\n O\u2019er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin\n Withheld their moisture, till by art provok\u2019d\n The sweats o\u2019erflow\u2019d; but in a clammy tide: 570\n Now free and copious, now restrain\u2019d and slow;\n Of tinctures various, as the temperature\n Had mix\u2019d the blood; and rank with fetid steams:\n As if the pent-up humors by delay\n Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign. 575\n Here lay their hopes (tho\u2019 little hope remain\u2019d)\n With full effusion of perpetual sweats\n To drive the venom out. And here the fates\n Were kind, that long they linger\u2019d not in pain.\n For who surviv\u2019d the sun\u2019s diurnal race 580\n Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeem\u2019d:\n Some the sixth hour oppress\u2019d, and some the third.\n\n Of many thousands few untainted \u2019scap\u2019d;\n Of those infected fewer \u2019scap\u2019d alive:\n Of those who liv\u2019d some felt a second blow; 585\n And whom the second spar\u2019d a third destroy\u2019d.\n Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun\n The fierce contagion. O\u2019er the mournful land\n Th\u2019 infected city pour\u2019d her hurrying swarms:\n Rous\u2019d by the flames that fir\u2019d her seats around, 590\n Th\u2019 infected country rush\u2019d into the town.\n Some, sad at home, and in the desart some,\n Abjur\u2019d the fatal commerce of mankind;\n In vain: where\u2019er they fled the Fates pursued.\n Others, with hopes more specious, cross\u2019d the main, 595\n To seek protection in far-distant skies;\n But none they found. It seem\u2019d the general air\n Was then at enmity with English blood.\n For, but the race of England, all were safe\n In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste 600\n The foreign blood which Albion then contain\u2019d.\n Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven\n Involv\u2019d them still; and every breeze was bane.\n Where find relief? The salutary art\n Was mute; and, startled at the new disease, 605\n In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.\n To heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray\u2019rs;\n Heav\u2019n heard them not. Of every hope depriv\u2019d;\n Fatigu\u2019d with vain resources; and subdued\n With woes resistless and enfeebling fear; 610\n Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.\n Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,\n Nor ought was seen but ghastly views of death;\n Infectious horror ran from face to face,\n And pale despair. \u2019Twas all the business then 615\n To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.\n In heaps they fell: And oft one bed, they say,\n The sickening, dying, and the dead contain\u2019d.\n\n Ye guardian Gods, on whom the Fates depend\n Of tottering Albion! Ye eternal fires, 620\n That lead thro\u2019 heav\u2019n the wandering year! Ye powers,\n That o\u2019er th\u2019 incircling elements preside!\n May nothing worse than what this age has seen\n Arrive! Enough abroad, enough at home\n Has Albion bled. Here a distemper\u2019d heaven 625\n Has thin\u2019d her cities; from those lofty cliffs\n That awe proud Gaul, to Thule\u2019s wintry reign;\n While in the West, beyond th\u2019 Atlantic foam,\n Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have died\n The death of cowards, and of common men; 630\n Sunk void of wounds, and fall\u2019n without renown.\n\n But from these views the weeping Muses turn,\n And other themes invite my wandering song.\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\n\n\nBOOK IV.\n\nThe PASSIONS.\n\n\n The choice of aliment, the choice of air,\n The use of toil and all external things,\n Already sung; it now remains to trace\n What good what evil from ourselves proceeds:\n And how the subtle principle within 5\n Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay\n The passive body. Ye poetic Shades,\n That know the secrets of the world unseen,\n Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme\n Engag\u2019d, I wander thro\u2019 mysterious ways. 10\n\n There is, they say, (and I believe there is)\n A spark within us of th\u2019 immortal fire,\n That animates and moulds the grosser frame;\n And when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,\n Its native seat; and mixes with the Gods. 15\n Mean while this heavenly particle pervades\n The mortal elements, in every nerve\n It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain.\n And, in its secret conclave, as it feels\n The body\u2019s woes and joys, this ruling power 20\n Weilds at its will the dull material world,\n And is the body\u2019s health or malady.\n\n By its own toil the gross corporeal frame\n Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself:\n Nor less the labours of the mind corrode 25\n The solid fabric. For by subtle parts,\n And viewless atoms, secret Nature moves\n The mighty wheels of this stupendous world.\n By subtle fluids pour\u2019d thro\u2019 subtle tubes\n The natural, vital, functions are perform\u2019d. 30\n By these the stubborn aliments are tam\u2019d;\n The toiling heart distributes life and strength;\n These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these\n Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.\n\n But \u2019tis not Thought (for still the soul\u2019s employ\u2019d) 35\n \u2019Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay.\n All day the vacant eye without fatigue\n Strays o\u2019er the heaven and earth; but long intent\n On microscopic arts its vigour fails.\n Just so the mind, with various thought amus\u2019d, 40\n Nor aches itself, nor gives the body pain.\n But anxious Study, Discontent, and Care,\n Love without hope, and Hate without revenge,\n And Fear, and Jealousy, fatigue the soul,\n Engross the subtle ministers of life, 45\n And spoil the lab\u2019ring functions of their share.\n Hence the lean gloom that Melancholy wears;\n The Lover\u2019s paleness; and the sallow hue\n Of Envy, Jealousy; the meagre stare\n Of sore Revenge: The canker\u2019d body hence 50\n Betrays each fretful motion of the mind.\n\n The strong-built pedant; who both night and day\n Feeds on the coarsest fare the schools bestow,\n And crudely fattens at gross Burman\u2019s stall;\n O\u2019erwhelm\u2019d with phlegm lies in a dropsy drown\u2019d, 55\n Or sinks in lethargy before his time.\n With useful studies you, and arts that please\n Employ your mind, amuse but not fatigue.\n Peace to each drowsy metaphysic sage!\n And ever may the German folio\u2019s rest! 60\n Yet some there are, even of elastic parts,\n Whom strong and obstinate ambition leads\n Thro\u2019 all the rugged roads of barren lore,\n And gives to relish what their generous taste\n Would else refuse. But may nor thirst of fame 65\n Nor love of knowledge urge you to fatigue\n With constant drudgery the liberal soul.\n Toy with your books: and, as the various fits\n Of humour seize you, from Philosophy\n To Fable shift; from serious Antonine 70\n To Rabelais\u2019 ravings, and from prose to song.\n\n While reading pleases, but no longer, read;\n And read aloud resounding Homer\u2019s strain,\n And weild the thunder of Demosthenes.\n The chest so exercis\u2019d improves its strength; 75\n And quick vibrations thro\u2019 the bowels drive\n The restless blood, which in unactive days\n Would loiter else thro\u2019 unelastic tubes.\n Deem it not trifling while I recommend\n What posture suits: To stand and sit by turns, 80\n As nature prompts, is best. But o\u2019er your leaves\n To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts,\n And robs the fine machinery of its play.\n\n \u2019Tis the great art of life to manage well\n The restless mind. For ever on pursuit 85\n Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers.\n Quite unemploy\u2019d, against its own repose\n Its turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs\n Than what the body knows embitter life.\n Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of care, 90\n To sickly musing gives the pensive mind.\n There madness enters; and the dim-ey\u2019d Fiend,\n Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes\n Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale;\n A mournful visionary light o\u2019erspreads 95\n The chearful face of nature: earth becomes\n A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above.\n Then various shapes of curs\u2019d illusion rise;\n Whate\u2019er the wretched fears, creating Fear\n Forms out of nothing; and with monsters teems 100\n Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath\n A load of huge imagination heaves.\n And all the horrors, that the guilty feel,\n With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast.\n\n Such phantoms Pride in solitary scenes, 105\n Or Fear, on delicate Self-love creates.\n From other cares absolv\u2019d, the busy mind\n Finds in yourself a theme to pore upon;\n It finds you miserable, or makes you so.\n For while yourself you anxiously explore, 110\n Timorous Self-love, with sick\u2019ning Fancy\u2019s aid,\n Presents the danger that you dread the most,\n And ever galls you in your tender part.\n Hence some for love, and some for jealousy,\n For grim religion some, and some for pride, 115\n Have lost their reason: some for fear of want\n Want all their lives; and others every day\n For fear of dying suffer worse than death.\n Ah! from your bosoms banish, if you can,\n Those fatal guests: and first the Demon Fear; 120\n That trembles at impossible events,\n Lest aged Atlas should resign his load\n And heaven\u2019s eternal battlements rush down.\n Is there an evil worse than fear itself?\n And what avails it that indulgent heaven 125\n From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,\n If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,\n Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?\n Enjoy the present; nor with needless cares,\n Of what may spring from blind Misfortune\u2019s womb, 130\n Appal the surest hour that life bestows.\n Serene, and master of yourself, prepare\n For what may come; and leave the rest to heaven.\n\n Oft from the body, by long ails mistun\u2019d,\n These evils sprung the most important health, 135\n That of the mind, destroy: And when the mind\n They first invade, the conscious body soon\n In sympathetic languishment declines.\n These chronic passions, while from real woes\n They rise, and yet without the body\u2019s fault 140\n Infest the soul, admit one only cure;\n Diversion, hurry, and a restless life.\n Vain are the consolations of the wise,\n In vain your friends would reason down your pain.\n Oh ye whose souls relentless love has tam\u2019d 145\n To soft distress, or friends untimely slain!\n Court not the luxury of tender thought:\n Nor deem it impious to forget those pains\n That hurt the living, nought avail the dead.\n Go, soft enthusiast! quit the cypress groves, 150\n Nor to the rivulet\u2019s lonely moanings tune\n Your sad complaint. Go, seek the chearful haunts\n Of men, and mingle with the bustling croud;\n Lay schemes for wealth, or power, or fame, the wish\n Of nobler minds, and push them night and day. 155\n Or join the caravan in quest of scenes\n New to your eyes, and shifting every hour;\n Beyond the Alps, beyond the Apennines.\n Or, more advent\u2019rous, rush into the field\n Where war grows hot; and, raging thro\u2019 the sky, 160\n The lofty trumpet swells the maddening soul:\n And in the hardy camp and toilsome march\n Forget all softer and less manly cares.\n\n But most too passive, when the blood runs low,\n Too weakly indolent to strive with pain, 165\n And bravely by resisting conquer Fate,\n Try Circe\u2019s arts; and in the tempting bowl\n Of poison\u2019d Nectar sweet oblivion drink.\n Struck by the powerful charm, the gloom dissolves\n In empty air; Elysium opens round. 170\n A pleasing phrenzy buoys the lighten\u2019d soul,\n And sanguine hopes dispel your fleeting care;\n And what was difficult, and what was dire,\n Yields to your prowess and superior stars:\n The happiest you, of all that e\u2019er were mad, 175\n Or are, or shall be, could this folly last.\n But soon your heaven is gone; a heavier gloom\n Shuts o\u2019er your head: and, as the thundering stream,\n Swoln o\u2019er its banks with sudden mountain rain,\n Sinks from its tumult to a silent brook; 180\n So, when the frantic raptures in your breast\n Subside, you languish into mortal man;\n You sleep, and waking find yourself undone.\n For prodigal of life in one rash night\n You lavish\u2019d more than might support three days. 185\n A heavy morning comes; your cares return\n With tenfold rage. An anxious stomach well\n May be endur\u2019d; so may the throbbing head:\n But such a dim delirium, such a dream,\n Involves you; such a dastardly despair 190\n Unmans your soul, as madd\u2019ning Pentheus felt\n When, baited round Citheron\u2019s cruel sides,\n He saw two suns, and double Thebes ascend.\n You curse the sluggish Port; you curse the wretch,\n The felon, with unnatural mixture first 195\n Who dar\u2019d to violate the virgin Wine.\n Or on the fugitive Champain you pour\n A thousand curses; for to heav\u2019n your soul\n It rapt, to plunge you deeper in despair.\n Perhaps you rue even that divinest gift, 200\n The gay, serene, good-natur\u2019d Burgundy,\n Or the fresh fragrant vintage of the Rhine:\n And with that heaven from mortals had withheld\n The grape, and all intoxicating bowls.\n\n Besides, it wounds you sore to recollect 205\n What follies in your loose unguarded hour\n Escap\u2019d. By one irrevocable word,\n Perhaps that meant no harm, you lose a friend.\n Or in the rage of wine your hasty hand\n Performs a deed to haunt you to your grave. 210\n Add that your means, your health, your parts decay;\n Your friends avoid you; brutishly transform\u2019d\n They hardly know you; or if one remains\n To wish you well, he wishes you in heaven.\n Despis\u2019d, unwept you fall; who might have left 215\n A sacred, cherish\u2019d, sadly-pleasing name;\n A name still to be utter\u2019d with a sigh.\n Your last ungraceful scene has quite effac\u2019d\n All sense and memory of your former worth.\n\n How to live happiest; how avoid the pains, 220\n The disappointments, and disgusts of those\n Who would in pleasure all their hours employ;\n The precepts here of a divine old man\n I could recite. Tho\u2019 old, he still retain\u2019d\n His manly sense, and energy of mind. 225\n Virtuous and wise he was, but not severe;\n He still remember\u2019d that he once was young;\n His easy presence check\u2019d no decent joy.\n Him even the dissolute admir\u2019d; for he\n A graceful looseness when he pleas\u2019d put on, 230\n And laughing cou\u2019d instruct. Much had he read,\n Much more had seen; he studied from the life,\n And in th\u2019 original perus\u2019d mankind.\n\n Vers\u2019d in the woes and vanities of life,\n He pitied man: And much he pitied those 235\n Whom falsely-smiling fate has curs\u2019d with means\n To dissipate their days in quest of joy.\n Our aim is Happiness; \u2019tis yours, \u2019tis mine,\n He said, \u2019tis the pursuit of all that live;\n Yet few attain it, if \u2019twas e\u2019er attain\u2019d. 240\n But they the widest wander from the mark,\n Who thro\u2019 the flow\u2019ry paths of saunt\u2019ring Joy\n Seek this coy Goddess; that from stage to stage\n Invites us still, but shifts as we pursue.\n For, not to name the pains that pleasure brings 245\n To counterpoise itself, relentless Fate\n Forbids that we thro\u2019 gay voluptuous wilds\n Should ever roam: And were the Fates more kind\n Our narrow luxuries would soon be stale.\n Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick, 250\n And, cloy\u2019d with pleasure, squeamishly complain\n That all was vanity, and life a dream.\n Let nature rest: Be busy for yourself,\n And for your friend; be busy even in vain\n Rather than teize her sated appetites. 255\n Who never fasts no banquet e\u2019er enjoys;\n Who never toils or watches never sleeps.\n Let nature rest: And when the taste of joy\n Grows keen, indulge; but shun satiety.\n\n \u2019Tis not for mortals always to be blest. 260\n But him the least the dull or painful hours\n Of life oppress, whom sober Sense conducts\n And Virtue, thro\u2019 this labyrinth we tread.\n Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin;\n Virtue and Sense are one; and, trust me, he 265\n Who has not virtue is not truly wise.\n Virtue (for meer good-nature is a fool)\n Is sense and spirit, with humanity:\n \u2019Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds;\n \u2019Tis even vindictive, but in vengeance just. 270\n Knaves fain would laugh at it; some great ones dare;\n But at his heart the most undaunted son\n Of fortune dreads its name and awful charms.\n To noblest uses this determines wealth;\n This is the solid pomp of prosperous days; 275\n The peace and shelter of adversity.\n And if you pant for glory, build your fame\n On this foundation, which the secret shock\n Defies of Envy and all-sapping Time.\n The gawdy gloss of Fortune only strikes 280\n The vulgar eye: The suffrage of the wise,\n The praise that\u2019s worth ambition, is attain\u2019d\n By Sense alone, and dignity of mind.\n\n Virtue, the strength and beauty of the soul,\n Is the best gift of heaven: a happiness 285\n That even above the smiles and frowns of fate\n Exalts great Nature\u2019s favourites: a wealth\n That ne\u2019er encumbers, nor to baser hands\n Can be transfer\u2019d: it is the only good\n Man justly boasts of, or can call his own. 290\n Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn\u2019d;\n Or dealt by chance, to shield a lucky knave,\n Or throw a cruel sun-shine on a fool.\n But for one end, one much-neglected use,\n Are riches worth your care: (for Nature\u2019s wants 295\n Are few, and without opulence supplied.)\n This noble end is, to produce the Soul;\n To shew the virtues in their fairest light;\n To make Humanity the Minister\n Of bounteous Providence; and teach the Breast 300\n That generous luxury the Gods enjoy.\n\n Thus, in his graver vein, the friendly Sage\n Sometimes declaim\u2019d. Of Right and Wrong he taught\n Truths as resin\u2019d as ever Athens heard;\n And (strange to tell!) he practis\u2019d what he preach\u2019d. 305\n Skill\u2019d in the Passions, how to check their sway\n He knew, as far as Reason can controul\n The lawless Powers. But other cares are mine:\n Form\u2019d in the school of P\u00e6on, I relate\n What Passions hurt the body, what improve: 310\n Avoid them, or invite them, as you may.\n\n Know then, whatever chearful and serene\n Supports the mind, supports the body too.\n Hence the most vital movement mortals feel\n Is Hope; the balm and life-blood of the soul. 315\n It pleases, and it lasts. Indulgent heaven\n Sent down the kind delusion, thro\u2019 the paths\n Of rugged life; to lead us patient on;\n And make our happiest state no tedious thing.\n Our greatest good, and what we least can spare. 320\n Is Hope; the last of all our evils, Fear.\n\n But there are Passions grateful to the breast,\n And yet no friends to Life; perhaps they please\n Or to excess, and dissipate the soul;\n Or while they please, torment. The stubborn Clown, 325\n The ill-tam\u2019d Ruffian, and pale Usurer,\n (If Love\u2019s omnipotence such hearts can mould)\n May safely mellow into love; and grow\n Refin\u2019d, humane, and generous, if they can.\n Love in such bosoms never to a fault 330\n Or pains or pleases. But ye finer Souls,\n Form\u2019d to soft luxury, and prompt to thrill\n With all the tumults, all the joys and pains,\n That beauty gives; with caution and reserve\n Indulge the sweet destroyer of repose, 335\n Nor court too much the Queen of charming cares.\n For, while the cherish\u2019d poison in your breast\n Ferments and maddens; sick with jealousy,\n Absence, distrust, or even with anxious joy,\n The wholsome appetites and powers of life 340\n Dissolve in languor. The coy stomach loaths\n The genial board: Your chearful days are gone:\n The generous bloom that flush\u2019d your cheeks is fled.\n To sighs devoted and to tender pains,\n Pensive you sit, or solitary stray, 345\n And waste your youth in musing. Musing first\n Toy\u2019d into care your unsuspecting heart:\n It found a liking there, a sportful fire,\n And that fomented into serious love;\n Which musing daily strengthens and improves 350\n Thro\u2019 all the heights of fondness and romance:\n And you\u2019re undone, the fatal shaft has sped,\n If once you doubt whether you love or no.\n The body wastes away; th\u2019 infected mind,\n Dissolv\u2019d in female tenderness, forgets 355\n Each manly virtue, and grows dead to fame.\n Sweet heaven from such intoxicating charms\n Defend all worthy breasts! Not that I deem\n Love always dangerous, always to be shun\u2019d.\n Love well repaid, and not too weakly sunk 360\n In wanton and unmanly tenderness,\n Adds bloom to Health; o\u2019er every virtue sheds\n A gay, humane, and amiable grace,\n And brightens all the ornaments of man.\n But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack\u2019d 365\n With jealousy, fatigued with hope and fear,\n Too serious, or too languishingly fond,\n Unnerves the body and unmans the soul.\n And some have died for Love; and some run mad;\n And some with desperate hand themselves have slain. 370\n\n Some to extinguish, others to prevent,\n A mad devotion to one dangerous Fair,\n Court all they meet; in hopes to dissipate\n The cares of Love amongst a hundred Brides.\n Th\u2019 event is doubtful: for there are who find 375\n A cure in this; there are who find it not.\n \u2019Tis no relief, alas! it rather galls\n The wound, to those who are sincerely sick.\n For while from feverish and tumultuous joys\n The nerves grow languid and the soul subsides; 380\n The tender Fancy smarts with every sting;\n And what was Love before is Madness now.\n Is health your care, or luxury your aim,\n Be temperate still: When Nature bids obey;\n Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb. 385\n But when the prurient habit of delight,\n Or loose Imagination, spurs you on\n To deeds above your strength, impute it not\n To Nature: Nature all compulsion hates.\n Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown 390\n Urge you to feats you well might sleep without;\n To make what should be rapture a fatigue,\n A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms\n Of twining La\u00efs melt your manhood down.\n For from the colliquation of soft joys 395\n How chang\u2019d you rise! the ghost of what you was!\n Languid, and melancholy, and gaunt, and wan;\n Your veins exhausted and your nerves unstrung.\n Spoil\u2019d of its balm and sprightly zest, the blood\n Grows vapid phlegm; along the tender nerves 400\n (To each slight impulse tremblingly awake)\n A subtle Fiend that mimics all the plagues\n Rapid and restless springs from part to part.\n The blooming honours of your youth are fallen;\n Your vigour pines; your vital powers decay; 405\n Diseases haunt you; and untimely Age\n Creeps on; unsocial, impotent, and lewd.\n Infatuate, impious, epicure! to waste\n The stores of pleasure, chearfulness, and health!\n Infatuate all who make delight their trade, 410\n And coy perdition every hour pursue.\n\n Who pines with Love, or in lascivious flames\n Consumes, is with his own consent undone:\n He chuses to be wretched, to be mad;\n And warn\u2019d proceeds and wilful to his fate. 415\n But there\u2019s a Passion, whole tempestuous sway\n Tears up each virtue planted in the breast,\n And shakes to ruins proud philosophy.\n For pale and trembling Anger rushes in,\n With fault\u2019ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare; 420\n Fierce as the Tyger, madder than the seas,\n Desperate, and arm\u2019d with more than human strength.\n How soon the calm, humane, and polish\u2019d man\n Forgets compunction, and starts up a fiend!\n Who pines in Love, or wastes with silent Cares, 425\n Envy, or Ignominy, or tender Grief,\n Slowly descends and ling\u2019ring to the shades.\n But he whom Anger stings, drops, if he dies,\n At once, and rushes apoplectic down;\n Or a fierce fever hurries him to hell. 430\n For, as the Body thro\u2019 unnumber\u2019d strings\n Reverberates each vibration of the Soul;\n As is the Passion, such is still the Pain\n The Body feels; or chronic, or acute.\n And oft a sudden storm at once o\u2019erpowers 435\n The Life, or gives your Reason to the winds.\n Such fates attend the rash alarm of Fear,\n And sudden Grief, and Rage, and sudden Joy.\n\n There are, mean time, to whom the boist\u2019rous fit\n Is Health, and only fills the sails of life. 440\n For where the Mind a torpid winter leads,\n Wrapt in a Body corpulent and cold,\n And each clogg\u2019d function lazily moves on;\n A generous sally spurns th\u2019 incumbent load,\n Unlocks the breast, and gives a cordial glow. 445\n But if your wrathful blood is apt to boil,\n Or are your nerves too irritably strung;\n Wave all Dispute; be cautious if you joke;\n Keep Lent for ever; and forswear the Bowl.\n For one rash moment sends you to the shades, 450\n Or shatters every hopeful scheme of life,\n And gives to horror all your days to come.\n Fate, arm\u2019d with thunder, fire, and every plague\n That ruins, tortures, or distracts mankind,\n And makes the happy wretched in an hour, 455\n O\u2019erwhelms you not with woes so horrible\n As your own Wrath, nor gives more sudden blows.\n\n While Choler works, good Friend, you may be wrong;\n Distrust yourself, and sleep before you fight.\n \u2019Tis not too late to morrow to be brave; 460\n If Honour bids, to morrow kill or die.\n But calm advice against a raging fit\n Avails too little; and it tries the power\n Of all that ever taught in Prose or Song,\n To tame the Fiend that sleeps a gentle Lamb, 465\n And wakes a Lion. Unprovok\u2019d and calm,\n You reason well, see as you ought to see,\n And wonder at the madness of mankind:\n Seiz\u2019d with the common rage, you soon forget\n The speculations of your wiser hours. 470\n Beset with Furies of all deadly shapes,\n Fierce and insidious, violent and slow;\n With all that urge or lure us on to Fate;\n What refuge shall we seek? what arms prepare?\n Where Reason proves too weak, or void of wiles, 475\n To cope with subtle or impetuous Powers,\n I would invoke new Passions to your aid:\n With Indignation would extinguish Fear,\n With Fear or generous Pity vanquish Rage,\n And Love with Pride; and force to force oppose. 480\n\n There is a Charm: a Power that sways the breast;\n Bids every Passion revel or be still;\n Inspires with Rage, or all your Cares dissolves;\n Can sooth Distraction, and almost Despair.\n That Power is Music: Far beyond the stretch 485\n Of those unmeaning warblers on our stage;\n Those clumsy Heroes, those fat-headed Gods,\n Who move no Passion justly but Contempt:\n Who, like our dancers (light indeed and strong!)\n Do wond\u2019rous feats, but never heard of grace. 490\n The fault is ours; we bear those monstrous arts,\n Good Heaven! we praise them: we, with loudest peals,\n Applaud the fool that highest lifts his heels;\n And, with insipid shew of rapture, die\n Of ideot notes, impertinently long. 495\n But he the Muse\u2019s laurel justly shares,\n A Poet he, and touch\u2019d with Heaven\u2019s own fire;\n Who, with bold rage or solemn pomp of sounds,\n Inflames, exalts, and ravishes the soul;\n Now tender, plaintive, sweet almost to pain, 500\n In Love dissolves you; now in sprightly strains\n Breathes a gay rapture thro\u2019 your thrilling breast;\n Or melts the heart with airs divinely sad;\n Or wakes to horror the tremendous strings.\n Such was the bard, whose heavenly strains of old 505\n Appeas\u2019d the fiend of melancholy Saul.\n Such was, if old and heathen fame say true,\n The man who bade the Theban domes ascend,\n And tam\u2019d the savage nations with his song;\n And such the Thracian, whose harmonious lyre, 510\n Tun\u2019d to soft woe, made all the mountains weep;\n Sooth\u2019d even th\u2019 inexorable powers of Hell,\n And half redeem\u2019d his lost Eurydice.\n Music exalts each Joy, allays each Grief,\n Expells Diseases, softens every Pain, 515\n Subdues the rage of Poison, and the Plague;\n And hence the wise of ancient days ador\u2019d\n One Power of Physic, Melody, and Song.\n\n\n_The =END=._\n\n[Illustration]\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] Hygeia the goddess of health, was, according to the genealogy\nof the heathen deities, the daughter of Esculapius; who, as well as\nApollo, was distinguished by the name of P\u00e6on.\n\n[2] The wild rose, or that which grows upon the wild briar.\n\n[3] The burning fever.\n\n[4] Hippocrates.\n\n[5] In the human body, as well as in those of other animals, the larger\nblood-vessels are composed of smaller ones; which, by the violent\nmotion and pressure of the fluids in the large vessels, lose their\ncavities by degrees, and degenerate into impervious chords or fibres.\nIn proportion as these small vessels become solid, the larger must of\ncourse grow less extensile, more rigid, and make a stronger resistance\nto the action of the heart, and force of the blood. From this gradual\ncondensation of the smaller vessels, and consequent rigidity of the\nlarger ones, the progress of the human body from infancy to old age is\naccounted for.\n\n[6] This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and\nsignifies Reward or Prize.\n\n[7] The inflammation of the lungs.\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\nObvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations\nin hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other\nspelling and punctuation remains unchanged.\n\nItalics are represented thus _italic_.","title":"The art of preserving health: A poem","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15819}