None warmer sought the sires of human kind.
Happy in temperate peace! their equal days
Felt not th' alternate fits of feverish mirth,
And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas'd
They knew no pains but what the tender soul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget.
Blest with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they liv'd; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.
Oh! could those worthies from the world of Gods
Return to visit their degenerate sons,

How would they scorn the joys of modern time,
With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!
Too happy they! but wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on sloth begot disease.
Learn temperance, friends; and hear without
disdain

The choice of water. Thus the Coan sage 4
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of every school.
What least of foreign principles partakes
Is best: the lightest then; what bears the touch
Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air;
The most insipid; the most void of smell.
Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides
Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale
For ever boil, alike of winter frosts
And summers heat secure. The crystal stream,
Thro' rocks resounding, or for many a mile
O'er the chaf'd pebbles burl'd, yields wholesome,
pure,

And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,"
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Tho' thirst were e'er so resolute, avoid
The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods
As fill from Lethe Belgia's slow canals;
With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;
Squalid with generation, and the birth
Of little monsters ;) till the power of fire
Has from profane embraces disengag'd
The violated lymph. The virgin stream
In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.

Nothing like simple element dilutes
The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow.
But where the stomach indolent and cold
Toys with its duty, animate with wine
Th' insipid stream: tho' golden Ceres yields
A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught;
Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all
The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyss
Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught,
And furious with intoxicating fire;
Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw'd
Th' embodied mass. You see what countless
Embalm'd in fiery quintessence of wine, [years,
The puny wonders of the reptile world,
The tender rudiments of life, the slim
Uuravellings of minute anatomy,
Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain.
We curse not wine: the vile excess we blame;
More fruitful than th' accumulated board,
Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught
Faster and surer swells the vital tide;
And with more active poison than the floods
Of grosser crudity convey, pervades
The far remote meanders of our frame.
Ah! sly deceiver! branded o'er and o'er,
Yet still believ'd! exulting o'er the wreck
Of sober vows !-But the Parnassian maids
• Hippocrates.

4

Another time perhaps shall sing the joys',
The fatal charms, the many woes of wine;
Perhaps its various tribes and various powers.
Meantime, I would not always dread the
bowl,

Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,
Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels
The loitering crudities that burden life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Th' obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
Is full of chances, which, by habit's power,
To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine
To moisten well the thirsty suffrages;
Say how, unseason'd to the midnight frays
Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend
With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur'd?
Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees:
By slow degrees the liberal arts are won;
And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth
The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-inform'd experience found.
The least your bane: and only with your friends.
There are sweet follies; frailties to be seen
By friends alone, and men of generous minds.

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

What dextrous thousands just within the goal Of wild debauch direct their nightly course! Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days, No morning admonitions shock the head. But, ah! what woes remain ! life rolls apace And that incurable disease, old age, In youthful bodies more severely felt, More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime; Except kind Nature by some hasty blow Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate'er Beyond its natural fervour hurries on The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, High-season'd fare, or exercise to toil Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life, And sows the temples with untimely snow. When life is new the ductile fibres feel The heart's increasing force; and, day by day, The growth advances: 'till the larger tubes Acquiring (from their clemental veins 6,

5 See Book IV.

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

Condens'd to solid chords) a firmer tone,
Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood.
Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse
And pressure, still the great destroy the small;
Still with the ruins of the small grow strong.
Life glows meantime, amid the grinding force
Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes;
Its various functions vigorously are plied
By strong machinery; and in solid health
The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease.
But the full ocean ebbs : there is a point,
By Nature fix'd, when life must downward tend.
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still
To the weak throbs of th' ill supported heart.
This languishing, these strength'ning by degrees
To hard unyielding unelastic bone,

Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood
Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on;
It loiters still; and now it stirs no more.
This is the period few attain; the death
Of Nature; thus (so Heaven ordain'd it) life
Destroys itself; and could these laws have
chang'd

Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate;
And Homer live immortal as his song.

What does not fade? the tower that long had
stood

The crush of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the slow, but sure destroyer, Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base.
And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass,
Descend the Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires crush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old;
And all those worlds that roll around the Sun,
The Sun himself, shall die; and ancient Night
Again involve the desolate abyss:
'Till the Great FATHER thro' the lifeless gloom
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
For through the regions of unbounded space,
Where unconfin'd Omnipotence has room,
Being, in various systems, fluctuates still
Between creation and abhorr'd decay ;
It ever did, perhaps and ever will.
New worlds are still emerging from the deep;
The old descending, in their turns to rise.

If aught these lays the fickle health confirm.
To you, ye delicate, I write; for you
I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
And grow still paler by the midnight lamps.
Not to debilitate with timorous rules
A hardy frame: nor needlessly to brave
Inglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength,
Is all the lesson that in wholesome years
Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow'd
Who would with warm effeminacy nurse
The thriving oak which on the mountain's brow
Bears all the blasts that sweep the wint❜ry Hea-

ven.

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

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

Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves
Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone;
The greener juices are by toil subdu'd,
Mellow'd and subtiliz'd; the vapid old
Expell'd, and all the rancour of the blood.
Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
Of Nature and the year; come, let us stray
Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk:
Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan
The fleecy Heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm,
And shed a charming languour o'er the soul.
Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost
The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blasts
This way and that convolve the lab'ring woods.
My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain
Or fogs relent, no season should confine
Or to the cloister'd gallery or arcade.
Go, climb the mountain; from th' ethereal source
Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn
Beams o'er the hills; go, mount th' exulting
steed.

Already, see, the deep-mouth'd beagles catch
The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport
Intent, with emulous impatience try
Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey
Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer;
And through its deepest solitudes awake
The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale
Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue,
Not less delightful, the prolific stream
Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er

A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,

Swarms with the silver fry. Such, through the

bounds

such

groves,

Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent; Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; [stream The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air, Liddel; till now, except in Doric lays Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains, Unknown in song; though not a purer stream, Through meads more flowery, more romantic [Blood! Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred May still thy hospitable swains be blest In rural innocence; thy mountains still Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay With painted meadows, and the golden grain! Oft, with thy blooming sons, when life was new, Sportive and petulant, and charm'd with toys, In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd: Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks, With the well-imitated fly to hook The eager trout, and with the slender line And yielding rod solicit to the shore The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,

And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton Y

swarms.

Form'd on the Samian school, or those of Ind, There are who think these pastimes scarce hu

mane.

Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)
His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
But if through genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chase, nor care
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise th' insipid nature of the ground;
Or tame its savage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems
The amiable result of happy chance,
Is to create; and gives a god-like joy,
Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain
To check the lawless riot of the trees,
To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.
O happy he! whom, when his years decline,
(His fortune and his fame by worthy means
Attain'd, and equal to his moderate mind;
His life approv'd by all the wise and good,
Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves
Of Epicuras, from this stormy world,
Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares
Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd.
Happiest of men! if the same soil invites
A chosen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends;
With whom in easy commerce to pursue
Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame :
A fair ambition; void of strife or guile,
Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.

Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs
The visto best, and best conducts the stream:
Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;
Whom first the welcome Spring salutes; who
shows

The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms
Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice
To match the sprightly genius of champagne.
Thrice happy days! in rural business past:
VOL. XVI.

Blest winter nights! when as the genial fire
Cheers the wide hall, his cordial family
With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
Or through the fairy-land of tale or song
Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
Engag'd, and all that strikes humanity:
Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour
Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve
His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid
His festal roof; while, o'er the light repast,
And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
And, through the maze of conversation, trace
Whate'er amuses or improves the mind.
Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste
The native zest and flavour of the fruit,
Where sense grows wild and tastes of no manure)
The decent, honest, cheerful husbandman
Should drown his labour in my friendly bowl;
And at my table find himself at home.

Whate'er you study, in whate'er you sweat,
Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;
The tennis some; and some the graceful dance.
Others more hardy, range the purple heath,
Or naked stubble; where, from field to field,
The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight;
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour

The gun's unerring thunder: and there are Whom still the meed of the green archer charms.

He chooses best, whose labour entertains
His vacant fancy most: the toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your
limbs.

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

Begin with gentle toils; and as your nerves
Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire;
The prudent, even in every moderate walk,
At first but saunter, and by slow degrees
Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise
Well knows the master of the flying steed.
First from the goal the manag'd coursers play
On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth
Repress their foamy pride; but every breath
The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells,
Till all the fiery mettle has its way,
And the thick thunder hurries o'er the plain.
When all at once from indolence to toil
You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock
Are tir'd and crack'd, before their unctuous
coats,

Compress'd, can pour the lubricating balm.
Besides, collected in the passive veins,
The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,
O'erpowers the heart, and deluges the lungs
With dangerous inundation: oft the source

This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and significs reward or prize.

M m

Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood, Asthma, and feller peripneumony",

Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

Or more or less, so more or less you feel The functions labour: from this fatal source What woes descend is never to be sung.

Of soul is well compensated in limbs,

Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels

His vegetation and brute force decay.
The men of better clay and finer mould
Know nature, feel the human dignity,
And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes.
Pursu'd prolixly, even the gentlest toil
Is waste of health repose by small fatigue
Is earn'd, and (where your habit is not prone
To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows.
The fine and subtle spirits cost too much
To be profus'd, too much the roscid balm.
But when the hard varieties of life
You toil to learn, or try the dusty chase,
Or the warm deeds of some important day:
Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
In wish'd repose; nor court the fanning gale,
Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears-
Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires,
For bear! no other pestilence has driven
Such myriads o'er th' irremeable deep.
Why this so fatal, the sagacious Muse
Thro' nature's cunning labyrinths could trace:
But there are secrets which who knows not now,
Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
Of science; and devote seven years to toil.
Besides, I would not stun your patient ears
With what it little boots you to attain.
He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools
boil,

What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in th' Ionian wave;

Whence those impetuous currents in the main Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure As red Orion mounts the shrouded Heaven.

In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied
For polish'd luxury and useful arts;
All hot and reeking from th' Olympic strife,
And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath

Th' athletic youth relax'd their weary limbs.
Soft oils bedew'd them, with the grateful pow'rs
Of nard and cassia fraught, to sooth and heal
The cherish'd nerves. Our less voluptuous
clime

Not much invites us to such arts as these.
'Tis not for those, whom gelid skies embrace,
And chilling fogs; whose perspiration feels
Such frequent bars from Eurus and the North;
'Tis not for those to cultivate a skin
Too soft: or teach the recremental fume
Too fast to crowd thro' such precarious ways.
For through the small arterial mouths, that pierce
In endless millions the close-woven skin,
The baser fluids in a constant stream
Escape, and viewless melt into the winds.
While this eternal, this most copious waste
Of blood, degenerate into vapid brine,
Maintains its wonted measure, all the powers
Of health befriend you, all the wheels of life
With ease and pleasure move: but this restrain'd

The inflammation of the lungs.

That ride in whirlwind the parch'd Libyan air; Or waves that, when the blustering North embroils

The Baltic, thunder on the German shore.
Subject not then, by soft emollient arts,
This grand expense, on which your fates depend,
To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart
The genius of your clime: for from the blood
Least fickle rise the recremental steams,
And least obnoxious to the styptic air,

Which breathe through straiter and more callous pores.

The temper'd Scythian hence, half-naked treads
His boundless snows, nor rues th' inclement
Heaven;

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

Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach
Parch'd Mauritania, or the sultry west,
Or the wide flood that laves rich Indostan,
Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave
Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free
Th' evaporation through the soften'd skin
May bear proportion to the swelling blood.
So may they 'scape the fever's rapid flames;
| So feel untainted the hot breath of Hell.
With us, the man of no complaint demands
The warm ablution just enough to clear
The sluices of the skin, enough to keep
The body sacred from indecent soil.
Still to be pure, ev`n did it not conduce
(As much it does) to health, were greatly worth
Your daily pains. "Tis this adorns the rich;
The want of this is poverty's worst woe;
With this external virtue age maintains
A decent grace; without it youth and charms