The growth advances: till the larger tubes,
Acquiring (from their elemental veins 6
Condensed to solid chords 7) a firmer tone,
Sustain, and just sustain, the 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, whence life must downward tend.
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still
To the weak throbs of the ill-supported heart.
This languishing, these strengthening by degrees
To hard unyielding unelastic bone,
Through tedious channels the congealing flood
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 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 consequent rigidity of the larger ones, the progress of the human body from infancy to old age is accounted for.
7 According to Dr. Darwin, the immediate cause of old age seems to reside in the inirritability of the finer vessels or parts of our system; hence, these cease to act, and collapse, or become horny or bony.
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 changed,
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 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 ancient Night
Again involve the desolate abyss:
Till the great Father through 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 unconfined 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.
THROUGH various toils the adventurous Muse has
But half the toil, and more than half, remains.
Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song;
Plain, and of little ornament; and I
But little practised in the Aonian arts.
Yet not in vain such labours 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 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 eare 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 wintry heaven.
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,
Naught anxious he what sickly stars ascend.
He knows no laws by Esculapius given;
Yet him nor midnight fogs
Infest, nor those envenom'd shafts that fly
When rabid Sirius fires the 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 nursed of old her hardy sons;
And Rome's unconquer'd legions urged their way, 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 subdued, Mellow'd, and subtilized; 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 languor o'er the soul,
Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly frost
The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth
Indulge at home; nor ev'n when Eurus' blasts
This way and that convolve the labouring 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 the ethereal source
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 desperate deer;
And, through its deepest solitudes, awake
The vocal forest with the jovial horu.
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
Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent;
Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such
The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the stream
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddel; till now, except in Doric lays
Tuned to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song; though not a purer stream,
Through meads more flowery, more romantic
Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred flood! May still thy hospitable swains be bless'd
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