Nature profuses most, and most the taste
Demands. The fountain, edg'd with racy wine
Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls.
The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
Supports in else intolerable air;

While the cool palm, the plantain, and the grove
That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage
The torrid hell that beams upon their heads.
Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountain lead;
Now let me wander thro' your gelid reign.
I burn to view th' enthusiastic wilds
By mortal else untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks [song.
Whence glide the streaius renown'd in antient
Here from the desert down the rumbling steep
First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
A mighty flood to water half the east ;
And there, in Gothic solitude reclin'd,
The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn.
What solemn twilight, what stupendous shades,
Inwrap these infant floods! Thro' ev'ry nerve
A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear
Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round;
And, more gigantic still, th' impending trees
Stretchtheir extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are these the confines of soine fairy world,
A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds
What unknown nations, if indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies? And whither leads,
To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,
That subterraneous way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
This trembling ground. The task remains to sing
Your gifts (so Pæan, so the pow'rs of health
Command) to praise your crystal element :
The chief ingredient in Heaven's various works;
Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the source, of nutriment
And life to all that vegetate or live.

O comfortable streams! With eager lips,
And trembling hand, the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you: fresh vigor fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
None warmer sought the fires of human kind
Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days
Felt not th' alternate fits of fev'rish 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 degen'rate 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. [disdain
Learn temp'rance, friends; and hear without

• Hippocrates,

The choice of water. Thus the Coan * sage
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of ev'ry 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 its horrid sides
Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale
For ever boil, alike of winter frosts
And summer's heat secure. The crystal stream,
Through rocks resounding, or for many a mile
O'er the chaf'd pebbles hurl'd, yields wholesome
[thaws,

pure,

And mellow draughts; except when winter
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Tho' thirst was ne'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 pow'r 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, indolently given,
Toys with its duty, animate with wine
Th' insipid stream: tho' golden Ceres yields
A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught,
Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and al
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 countlessyears,
Embalm'd in fiery quintessence of wine,
The puny wonders of the reptile world,
The tender rudiments of life, the slim
Unravellings of minute anatomy,
Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain.

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

Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
Nor ev'ry trespass shun. The fev'rish strife,
Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels
The loit'ring crudities that burthen life;
And like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Th'obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
Is full of chances, which by habit's pow'r
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 lib'ral arts are won,
And Hercules grew strong. Butwhen 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 gen'rous minds.
Oh seldom may the fated hours return
Of drinking deep? I would not daily taste,
Except when life declines, ev'n sober cups.
Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
With frugal nectar, smooth and slow, with balm
The sapless habit daily to bedew,
And give the hesitating wheels of life
Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys:
And is it wise, when youth with pleasure flows,
To squander the reliefs of age and pain? [goal
What dextrous thousands just within the
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 ling'ring fates. For know, whate'er
Beyond its natural fervor hurries on
The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl,
High season'd fare, or exercise to toil
Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life,
And sows the temples with untimely snow.
When life is new, the ductile fibres feel

To the weak throbs of th' ill-supported heart.
these 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 tow'r 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.
Tune shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all those worlds that roll around the sun,
The sun himself shall die, and antient night
Again involve the desolate abyss,
Till the great Father thro' the lifeless gloom -
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
For thro' the regions of unbounded space,
Where unconfin'd Onnipotence has room,
Being, in various systems, fluctuates still
Between creation and abhorr'd decay;
It ever did, perhaps, and ever will.
New worlds are still emerging from the deep;
The old descending, in their turns to rise.

BOOK III. EXERCISE.

THRO' various toils th' adventurous Musc has pass'd;

The heart's increasing force; and day by day,But half the toil, and more than half, remains,

The growth advances: till the larger tubes,
Acquiring (from their elemental veins
Condens'd to solid chords) a firmer tone,
Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood.
Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse
And pressure, still the great destroy the small;
Sull with the ruins of the small grow strong.
Life glows meantime amid the grinding force
Of viscous Buids and elastic tubes;

Its various functions vigorously are plied

Bv

strong machinery; and in solid health
The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease.
But the full ocean ebbs; there is a point, [tend.
By nature fix'd, whence life must downwards
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still

Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song;
Plain, and of little ornament; and L
But little practis'd in the Aonian arts.
Yet not in vain such labors have we tried,
If aught these lays the fickle health confirm.
To you, ye delicate, I write for you
I tame my youth to philosophic cares,
And grow still paler by the midnight lamp.
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 [stow'd,
Concerns the strong. His care were ill be-
Who would with warm effeminacy nure
The thrivingoak which on the mountain's brow
Bears all the blasts that sweep the wint'ry Heaven.

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

Gg

Behold

Behold the laborer 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 rapid Sirius fires th' autumnal noon.
His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,
Robust with labor, and by custom steel'd
To ev'ry 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 labors such. By health the peasant's toil
Is well repaid, if exercise were pain
Indeed, and temp'rance pain. By arts like these
Laconia nurs'd of old her hardy sons;
And Rome's unconquer'd legionsurg'd their way
Unhurt, thro' ev'ry toil, in ev'ry clime.
Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves
Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone;
The greener juices are by toil subdued,
Mellow'd and subtiliz'd; the vapid old
Expell'd, and all the rancor of the blood.
Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms
Of nature and the year; come, let us stray
Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk:
Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan
The fleecy heavens, inwrap the limbs with balm,
And shed a charming langour o'er the soul.
Nor when bright Winter sows the prickly frost
The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
Indulge at home; nor even when Eurns' 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 closter'd gallery or arcade. [source
Go, climb the mountain: from the ethereal
Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn
Beams o'er the hills; go mount the 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 desp'rate deer;
And thro' its deepest solitudes awake
The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

But if the breathless chace o'er hill and dale
Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue,
Not less delightful, the prolific streamn
Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er
A stony channel rolls its rapid maze, [bounds
Swarms with the silver fry. Such thro' the
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,
Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
Turn'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in songs; tho' not a purer stream,
Thro' meads more flow'ry, or more romantic
groves,

snch

Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred
May still thy hospitable swains be blest [flood
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 [clouds
The struggling panting prey; while `vernal
And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,
Andfromthe deeps call'dforththewanton swarms

Farm'd on the Samian school, or those of Ind,
There are who think these pastimes scarce hu-
Yet in my mind (and not relentless I) [mane j
His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
But if thro' genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chace, nor care
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise th' inspid 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 godlike 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 mod'rate mind:
His life approv'd by all the wise and good,
Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves
Of Epicurus, from this stormy world,
Receive to rest, of all ungrateful cares
Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd!
Happiest of men, if the same soil invites
A chosen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends
With whom in easy commerce to pursue
Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame!
A fair ambition, void of strife or guile,
Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone,
Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs,
The visto best, and best conducts the stream;
Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;
Whom first the welcomespringsalutes; whoshows
Thecarliest bloom; the sweetest, proudest charma
Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice
To match the sprightly genius of champaign.
Thrice happy day in rural bus'ness pass'd;
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:

• This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and signifies reward or prize. + The inflammation of the lungs.

The functions labor: from this fatal source
What woes descend is never to be sung.
To take their numbers were to count the sands
That ride in whirlwind the parch'd Lybian air:
Or waves that, when the blust'ring North em-
broils

The Baltic, thunder on the German shore
Subject not then, by soft emollient arts,
This grand expence, on which your fates depend,
To ev'ry caprice of the sky; nor thwart
The genius of your clime: for from the blood
Least tickle rise the recremental streams,

With this external virtue age maintains
A decent grace; without it, youth and charms
Are loathsome. This the venal Graces know,
So doubtless do your wives; for married sires,
As well as lovers, still pretend to taste;
Nor is it less (all prudent wives can tell)
To lose a husband's than a lover's heart.

But now the hours and seasons when to toil From foreign themes recall my wand'ring song Some labor fasting, or but slightly fed, To lull the grinding stomach's hungry rage, Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame: And least obnoxious to the styptic air, [pores "Tis wisely done: for while the thirsty veins, Which breathe thro' straiter and more callous, Impatient of lean penury, devour The temper'd Scythian hence half naked treads The treasur'd oil, then is the happiest time His boundless shows, nor rues th' inclement To shake the lazy balsain from its cells. And hence our painted ancestors defied [heaven: Now while the stomach from the full repast The East; nor curs'd, like us, their fickle sky. Subsides, but cre the returning hunger gaws, The body, moulded by the clime, endures Ye leaner habits, give an hour to toil; Th' equator heats or hyperborean frost : And ye whom no luxuriancy of growth Except, by habits foreign to its turn, Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress. Unwise you counteract its forming pow'r. But from the recent meal no labors please, Rude at the first, the winter shocks you less Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial pow'rs By long acquaintance: study then your sky, Claim all the wand'ring spirits to a work Form to its manners your obsequious frame, Of strong and subtle toil and great event, And learn to suffer what you cannot shun. A work of time; and you may rue the day Against the rigors of a dainp cold heaven You hurried, with untimely exercise, To fortify their bodies, some frequent A half-concocted chyle into the blood. The gelid cistern; and, where nought forbids, The body overcharged with unctuous phlegm I praise their dauntless heart; a frame so steel'd Much toil demands; the lean elastic less. Dreads not the cough, nor those ungenial blasts While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins, That breathe the Tertian or fell Rheumatism; No labors are too hard; by those you 'scape The nerves so temper'd never quit their tone; The slow diseases of the torpid year, No chronic languors haunt such hardy breasts. Endless to name; to one of which alone, But all things have their bounds: and he who To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves By daily use the kindest regimen [makes Is pleasure. Oh, from such ruhuman pains Essential to his health, should never mix May all be free who merit not the wheel! With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue. But from the burning Lion when the sun He not the safe vicissitudes of life Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood Without some shock endures; ill-fitted he Too much already maddens in the veins, To want the known, or bear unusual things. And all the finer fluids thro' the skin 'Besides, the pow'rful remedies of pain Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade (Since pain in spite of all our cares will come) Reclin'd, or saunt'ring in the lofty grove, Should never with your prosp'rous days of health No needless slight occasion should engage Grow too familiar for by frequent use Το pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon. The strongest med'cines lose their healing pow'r, Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve And e'en the surest poisons theirs to kill. To shady walks and active rural sports Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach Invite. But, while the cltilling dews descend, Parch'd Mauritania, or the sultry west, May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace Or the wide flood thro' rich Indostan roll'd, Of humid skies; tho' tis no vulgar joy Plunge thrice a day, and in the tepid wave To trace the horrors of the solemn wood Untwist their stubborn pores; that full and free Th' evaporation thro' the soften'd skin May bear proportion to the swelling blood : So shall they 'scape the fever's rapid flames, So feel untainted the hot breath of hell. 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;

While the soft ev'ning saddens into night;
Tho' the sweet Poet of the vernal groves
Melts all the night in strains of am'rous woe.
The shades descend, and midnight o'er the world
Expands her sable wings; great Nature droops
Thro all her works. Now happy he whose tal
Has o'er his languid pow'rless limbs diffus'd

pleasing lassitude: he not in vain
Invokes the gentle Deity of dreams.
His pow'rs the most voluptuously dissolve
In soft repose: on him the balmy dews
Of sleep with double nutriment descend.
But would you sweetly waste the blank of night