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 fountains lead;
Now let me wander through your gelid reign.
I burn to view the enthusiastic wilds
By mortal else untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy reverence I approach the rocks
Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song.
Here from the 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 reclined,
The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn.
What solemn twilight, what stupendous shades
Enwrap these infant floods! Through every nerve
A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear
Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round
And more gigantic still, the impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are these the confines of some fairy world?
A land of genii? Say, beyond these wilds
What unknown nations? if indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,
To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,
That subterraneous way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
This trembling ground. The task remains to sing
Your gifts, (so Pæon, so the powers of health
Command) to praise your crystal element :
The chief ingredient in Heaven's various works;
Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the source, of nutriment
And life, to all that vegetate or live.
O comfortable streams! with eager lips
And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew ;
None warmer sought the sires of human kind.
Happy in temperate peace! their equal days
Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth
And sick dejection. Still serene and pleased
They knew no pains but what the tender soul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget.
Bless'd with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they lived; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death.
O! 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 improved to pain!
Too happy they! but wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on sloth begot disease.
Learn temperance, friends! and hear without
disdain
Opined, 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 summer's heat secure. The crystal stream,
Through rocks resounding, or for many a mile
O'er the chafed pebbles hurl'd, yields wholesome,
And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Though 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 disengaged
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
The insipid stream: though 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
The embodied mass. You see what countless years,
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 unchanged remain.
We curse not wine: the vile excess we blame;
More fruitful than the 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 believed! 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 powers5.
Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,
Roused by the rare debauch, subdues, expels
The loitering crudities that burden life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
The 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 inured?
Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees :
By slow degrees the liberal arts are won;
And Hercules grew strong. But when you smoothe
The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-inform'd experience found
The least your bane; and ouly with your friends.
There are sweet follies; frailties to be seen
By friends alone, and men of generous minds.
O! 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?
What dexterous 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 tired 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,
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