Of nard and cassia fraught, to soothe 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 through 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, degenerates 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 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.
To take their numbers were to count the sands 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
The temper'd Scythian hence, half-naked treads
His boundless snows, nor rues the inclement
And hence our painted ancestors defied
The East; nor cursed, like us, their fickle sky. The body, moulded by the clime, endures The Equator heats or Hyperborean frost: Except by habits foreign to its turn, Unwise you counteract its forming power. 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 rigours of a damp cold heaven To fortify their bodies, some frequent The gelid cistern; and, where naught 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 makes By daily use the kindest regimen
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 ev❜n 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 The 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 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 recal my wandering song. Some labour fasting, or but slightly fed
To lull the grinding stomach's hungry rage. Where nature feeds too corpulent a frame 'Tis wisely done for while the thirsty veins, Impatient of lean penury, devour
The treasured oil, then is the happiest time To shake the lazy balsam from its cells. Now while the stomach from the full repast Subsides, but ere returning hunger gnaws,
Ye leaner habits, give an hour to toil; And ye, whom no luxuriancy of growth Oppresses yet, or threatens to oppress. But from the recent meal no labours please, Of limbs or mind. For now the cordial powers Claim all the wandering spirits to a work Of strong and subtle toil, and great event: A work of time; and you may rue the day You hurried, with untimely exercise, A half-concocted chyle into the blood. The body overcharged with unctuous phlegm Much toil demands: the lean elastic, less. While winter chills the blood and binds the veins, No labours are too hard: by those you 'scape The slow diseases of the torpid year,
Endless to name; to one of which alone,
To that which tears the nerves, the toil of slaves Is pleasure: O! from such inhuman pains May all be free who merit not the wheel! But from the burning Lion when the Sun Pours down his sultry wrath; now while the blood Too much already maddens in the veins, And all the finer fluids through the skin Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade Reclined, or sauntering in the lofty grove, No needless slight occasion should engage To pant and sweat beneath the fiery noon. Now the fresh morn alone and mellow eve To shady walks and active rural sports Invite. But, while the chilling dews descend, May nothing tempt you to the cold embrace Of humid skies; though 'tis no vulgar joy To trace the horrors of the solemn wood While the soft evening saddens into night:
Though the sweet poet of the vernal groves Melts all the night in strains of amorous woe.
The shades descend, and midnight o'er the world Expands her sable wings. Great Nature droops Through all her works. Now happy he whose toil Has o'er his languid powerless limbs diffused A pleasing lassitude: he not in vain Invokes the gentle deity of dreams. His powers 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 In deep oblivion; or on Fancy's wings Visit the paradise of happy dreams,
And waken cheerful as the lively morn; Oppress not Nature sinking down to rest With feasts too late, too solid, or too full : But be the first concoction half-matured Ere you to mighty indolence resign Your passive faculties. He from the toils And troubles of the day to heavier toil Retires, whom trembling from the tower that rocks Amid the clouds, or Calpe's hideous height, The busy demons hurl; or in the main O'erwhelm; or bury struggling under ground. Not all a monarch's luxury the woes
Can counterpoise of that most wretched man, Whose nights are shaken with the frantic fits Of wild Orestes; whose delirious brain, Stung by the Furies, works with poison'd thought: While pale and monstrous painting shocks the soul; And mangled consciousness bemoans itself For ever torn; and chaos floating round.
What dreams presage, what dangers these or those
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