The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immured in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumbering deep remains, and ranker grows With sickly rest: and (though the lungs abhor To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)
Did not the acid vigour of the mine,
Roll'd from so many thundering chimneys, tame The putrid steams that overswarm the sky; This caustic venom would perhaps corrode Those tender cells that draw the vital air, In vain with all the unctuous rills bedew'd; Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin Imbibed, would poison the balsamic blood, And rouse the heart to every fever's rage. While yet you breathe, away; the rural wilds Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales; The woods, the streams, and each ambrosial breeze That fans the ever-undulating sky:
A kindly sky! whose fostering power regales Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.
Find then some woodland scene where Nature smiles
Benign, where all her honest children thrive. To us there wants not many a happy seat! Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice. See where enthroned in adamantine state, Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits; Where choose thy seat, in some aspiring grove Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats, (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise
Rural or gay). O! from the summer's rage, O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides Umbrageous Ham!-But if the busy town. Attract thee still to toil for power or gold, Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess In Hampstead, courted by the western wind; Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood; Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd. Green rise the Kentish hills in cheerful air; But on the marshy plaius that Lincolu spreads Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet. For on a rustic throne of dewy turf,
With baneful fogs her aching temples bound, Quartana there presides; a meagre fiend Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the Fens. From such a mixture sprung, this fitful pest With feverish blasts subdues the sickening land: Cold tremors come, with mighty love of rest, Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loius, And rack the joints, and every torpid limb; Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats O'erflow; a short relief from former ills. Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine; The vigour sinks, the habit melts away; The cheerful, pure, and animated bloom Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad." And oft the sorceress, in her sated wrath, Resigns them to the furies of her train;
The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow2 fiend Tinged with her own accumulated gall.
In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake; Where many lazy muddy rivers flow :
Nor for the wealth that all the Indies roll Fix near the marshy margin of the main. For from the humid soil and watery reign Eternal vapours rise; the spongy air For ever weeps: or, turgid with the weight Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. Skies such as these let every mortal shun Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout, Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh ; Or any other injury that grows
From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung, Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood In languid eddies loitering into phlegm.
Yet not alone from humid skies we pine; For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven, That winnows into dust the blasted downs, Bare and extended wide without a stream, Too fast imbibes the attenuated lymph
Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales. The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay Their flexible vibrations; or, inflamed, Their tender ever-moving structure thaws. Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide That slow as Lethe wanders through the veins; Unactive in the services of life,
Unfit to lead its pitchy current through
The secret mazy channels of the brain. The melancholic fiend (that worst despair Of physic) hence the rust-complexion'd man Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain Too stretch'd a tone; and hence, in climes adust, So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves, And burning fevers glow with double rage.
Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. But as the power of choosing is denied To half mankind, a further task ensues; How best to mitigate these fell extremes, How breathe unhurt the withering element, Or hazy atmosphere; though custom moulds To every clime the soft Promethean clay; And he who first the fogs of Essex breathed (So kind is native air) may in the fens Of Essex from inveterate ills revive At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught. But if the raw and oozy heaven offend, Correct the soil, and dry the sources up Of watery exhalation; wide and deep Conduct your trenches through the quaking bog; Solicitous, with all your winding arts, Betray the unwilling lake into the stream; And weed the forest, and invoke the winds To break the toils where strangled vapours lie; Or through the thickets send the crackling flames. Meantime at home with cheerful fires dispel The humid air: and let your table smoke With solid roast or baked; or what the herds Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds Yield to the toilsome pleasures of the chase.
Generous your wine, the boast of ripening years; But frugal be your cups: the languid frame, Vapid and sunk from yesterday's debauch, Shrinks from the cold embrace of watery heavens. But neither these nor all Apollo's arts Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky, Unless with exercise and manly toil
You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood. The fattening clime let all the sons of ease Avoid; if indolence would wish to live, Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch The skin and lungs, and bake the thickening blood; Deep in the waving forest choose your seat, Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate their rapid stream. Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The moist relaxing vegetable store,
Prevail in each repast. Your food supplied By bleeding life, be gently wasted down, By soft decoction and a mellowing heat, To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass You choose, tormented in the boiling wave; That through the thirsty channels of the blood A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow. The fragrant dairy, from its cool recess, Its nectar acid or benign will pour
To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl Of keen sherbet the fickle taste relieve. For with the viscous blood the simple stream Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups Oft dissipate more moisture than they give.
« ПретходнаНастави » |