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Dwells not in mortal fire; whose gen'rous heat
Glows through the mass of grosser elements,
And kindles into life the ponderous spheres.
Cheer'd by thy kind invigorating warmth,
We court thy beams, great majesty of day!
If not the soul, the regent of this world,
First-born of Heaven, and only less than God!

BOOK II.

DIET.

ENOUGH of air. A desert subject now,
Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight.
A barren waste, where not a garland grows
To bind the Muse's brow; not ev'n a proud
Stupendo is solitude frowns o'er the heath,
To rouse a noble horror in the soul:
But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads
Through endless labyrinths the devious feet.
Farewell, ethereal fields! the humbler arts
Of life; the table and the homely gods
Demand my song. Elysian gales, adieu!

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits
The generous stream that waters every part,
And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys
To every particle that moves or lives;
This vital fluid, through unnumber'd tubes
Pour'd by the heart, and to the heart again
Refunded; scourg'd for ever round and round;
Enrag'd with heat and toil, at last forgets
Its balmy nature; virulent and thin

flow,

It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates
Are open to its flight, it would destroy
The parts it cherish'd and repair'd before.
Besides, the flexible and tender tubes
Melt in the mildest most nectareous tide
That ripening Nature rolls; as in the stream
Its crumbling banks; but what the force
Of plastic fluids hourly batters down,
That very force, those plastic particles
Rebuild so mutable the state of man.
For this the watchful appetite was given,
Daily with fresh materials to repair
This unavoidable expense of life,
This necessary waste of flesh and blood.
Hence, the concoctive powers, with various art,
Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle;
The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide
To liquors, which through finer arteries
To different parts their winding course pursue;
To try new changes, and new forms put on,
Or for the public, or some private use.

Nothing so foreign but th' athletic hind
Can labor into blood. The hungry meal
Alone he fears, or aliments too thin;
By violent powers too easily subdu'd,
Too soon expell'd. His daily labor thaws,
To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass
That salt can harden, or the smoke of years;
Nor does his gorge the luscious bacon rue,
Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste
Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay,
Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste
With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day!
Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid
The full repast; and let sagacious age
Grow wiser, lessen'd by the dropping teeth.
Half subtiliz'd to chyle, the liquid food

Readiest obeys th' assimilating powers;
And soon the tender vegetable mass
Relents; and soon the young of those that tread
The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss,
Or pathless sky. And if the steer must fall,
In youth and sanguine vigor let him die;
Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails,
Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke.
Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease,
Indulge the veteran ox; but wiser thou,
From the bald mountain or the barren downs,
Expect the flocks by frugal Nature fed;
A race of purer blood, with exercise
Refin'd and scanty fare: for, old or young,
The stall'd are never healthy; nor the cramm'd
Not all the culinary arts can tame
To wholesome food, the abominable growth
Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste
Rejects like bane such lothesome lusciousness.
The languid stomach curses even the pure
Delicious fat, and all the race of oil:
For more the oily aliments relax
Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph
(Fond to incorporate with all it meets)
Coyly they mix, and shun with slippery wiles
The woo'd embrace. Th' irresoluble oil,
So gentle late and blandishing, in floods
Of rancid bile o'erflows: what tumults hence,
What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.
Choose leaner viands, ye whose jovial make
Too fast the gummy nutriment imbibes:
Choose sober meals; and rouse to active life
Your cumbrous clay; nor on the enfeebling down
Irresolute, protract the morning hours.
But let the man whose bones are thinly clad,
With cheerful ease and succulent repast
Improve his habit if he can; for each
Extreme departs from perfect sanity.

I could relate what table this demands,
Or that complexion; what the various powers
Of various foods: but fifty years would roll,
And fifty more before the tale were done.
Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange,
Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display'd,
Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen;
Which finds a poison in the food that most
The temp'rature affects. There are, whose blood
Impetuous rages through the turgid veins,
Who better bear the fiery fruits of India
Than the moist melon, or pale cucumber.
Of chilly nature others fly the board
Supplied with slaughter, and the vernal powers
For cooler, kinder sustenance implore.
Some even the generous nutriment detest
Which, in the shell, the sleeping embryo rears.
Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts
Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:
The balmy quintessence of every flower,
And every grateful herb that decks the spring;
The fost'ring dew of tender sprouting life;
The best refection of declining age;
The kind restorative of those who lie
Half dead and panting, from the doubtful strife
Of nature struggling in the grasp of death.
Try all the bounties of this fertile globe,
There is not such a salutary food
As suits with every stomach. But (except,
Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl,
And boil'd and bak'd, you hesitate by which
You sunk oppress'd, or whether not by all)

Taught by experience, soon you may discern
What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates
That lull the sicken'd appetite too long;
Or heave with fev'rish flushings all the face,
Burn in the palms, and parch the rough'ning
tongue;

Or much diminish or too much increase
Th' expense, which Nature's wise economy,
Without or waste or avarice, maintains.
Such cates abjur'd, let prowling hunger loose,
And bid the curious palate roam at will;
They scarce can err amid the various stores
That burst the teeming entrails of the world.
Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king
Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives;
The tiger, form'd alike to cruel meals,
Would at the manger starve; of milder seeds
The generous horse to herbage and to grain
Confines his wish; though fabling Greece resound
The Thracian steeds with human carnage wild.
Prompted by instinct's never-erring power,
Each creature knows its proper aliment;
But man, th' inhabitant of every clime,
With all the commoners of Nature feeds.
Directed, bounded, by this power within,
Their cravings are well aim'd: voluptuous man
Is by superior faculties misled;

Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy,
Sated with Nature's boons, what thousands seek,
With dishes tortur'd from their native taste,
And mad variety, to spur beyond
Its wiser will the jaded appetite!

Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste!
And know that temperance is true luxury.
Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim,
Dismiss your parasites who praise for hire;
And earn the fair esteem of honest men,

For want of use the kindest aliment
Sometimes offends; while custom tames the rage
Of poison to mild amity with life.

So Heaven has form'd us to the general taste
Of all its gifts: so custom has improv'd
This bent of nature; that few simple foods,
Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield,
But by excess offend. Beyond the sense
Of light refection, at the genial board
Indulge not often; nor protract the feast
To dull satiety; till soft and slow

A drowsy death creeps on, th' expansive soul
Oppress'd, and smother'd the celestial fire.
The stomach, urg'd beyond its active tone,
Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues
The softest food: unfinish'd and deprav'd,
The chyle, in all its future wanderings, owns
Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams
So to be clear'd, but foulness will remain.
To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt
Th' unripen'd grape? or what mechanic skill
From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold?
Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund
Of plagues: but more immedicable ills
Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows
How to disburthen the too tumid veins,
Even how to ripen the half-labor'd blood :
But to unlock the elemental tubes,
Collaps'd and shrunk with long inanity,
And with balsamic nutriment repair
The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid
Old age grow green, and wear a second spring;
Or the tall ash, long ravish'd from the soil,
Through wither'd veins imbibe the vernal dew.
When hunger calls, obey; not often wait
Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain:
For the keen appetite will feast beyond

Whose praise is fame. Form'd of such clay as yours, What nature well can bear: and one extreme

The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates.
Even modest want may bless your hand unseen,
Though hush'd in patient wretchedness at home.
Is there no virgin, grac'd with ev'ry charm
But that which binds the mercenary vow?
No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom
Unfoster'd sickens in the barren shade?
No worthy man by fortune's random blows,
Or by a heart too generous and humane,
Constrain'd to leave his happy natal seat,
And sigh for wants more bitter than his own?
There are, while human miseries abound,
A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth,
Without one fool or flatterer at your board,
Without one hour of sickness or disgust.

But other ills th' ambiguous feast pursue,
Besides provoking the lascivious taste.
Such various foods, though harmless each alone,
Each other violate; and oft we see

What strife is brew'd, and what pernicious bane,
From combinations of obnoxious things.
Th' unbounded taste I mean not to confine
To hermit's diet needlessly severe.

But would you long the sweets of health enjoy,
Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal
Exhaust not half the bounties of the year,
Of every realm. It matters not meanwhile
How much to-morrow differ from to-day;
So far indulge; 'tis fit, besides, that man,
To change obnoxious, be to change inur'd.
But stay the curious appetite, and taste
With caution fruits you never tried before.

Ne'er without danger meets its own reverse.
Too greedily th' exhausted veins absorb
The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers
Oft to th' extinction of the vital flame.
To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege
And famine humbled, may this verse be borne ;
And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds,
Long toss'd and famish'd on the wintry main ;
The war shook off, or hospitable shore

| Attain'd, with temperance bear the shock of joy ;
Nor crown with festive rites th' auspicious day:
Such feasts might prove more fatal than the waves
Than war or famine. While the vital fire
Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on;
But prudently foment the wandering spark
With what the soonest feeds its kindest touch:
Be frugal ev'n of that: a little give
At first; that kindled, add a little more;
Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame
Reviv'd with all its wonted vigor glows.

But though the two (the full and the jejune)
Extremes have each their vice; it much avails
Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow
From this to that; so nature learns to bear
Whatever chance or headlong appetite
May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues
The cruder clods by sloth or luxury
Collected, and unloads the wheels of life.
Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast
Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lowers;
Then is the time to shun the tempting board,
Were it your natal or your nuptial day

Perhaps a fast so seasonable starves

The latent seeds of woe, which rooted once
Might cost you labor. But the day return'd
Of festal luxury, the wise indulge
Most in the tender vegetable breed:
Then chiefly when the summer beams inflame
The brazen Heavens; or angry Sirius sheds
A feverish taint through the still gulf of air.
The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup
From the fresh dairy-virgin's liberal hand,
Will save your head from harm, tho' round the world
The dreaded causos* roll his wasteful fires.
Pale humid Winter loves the generous board,
The meal more copious, and the warmer fare;
And longs with old wood and old wine to cheer
His quaking heart. The seasons which divide
Th' empires of heat and cold; by neither claim'd,
Influenc'd by both; a middle regimen
Impose. Through Autumn's languishing domain
Descending, Nature by degrees invites
To glowing luxury. But from the depth
Of Winter, when th' invigorated year
Emerges; when Favonius, flush'd with love,
Toyful and young, in every breeze descends
More warm and wanton on his kindling bride;
Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks;
And learn, with wise humanity, to check
The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits
A various offspring to the indulgent sky:
Now bounteous Nature feeds with lavish hand
The prone creation; yields what once suffic'd
Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young;
Ere yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seiz'd
The human breast.-Each rolling month matures
The food that suits it most; so does each clime.
Far in the horrid realms of Winter, where
Th' establish'd ocean heaps a monstrous waste
Of shining rocks and mountains to the Pole,
There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants
Relentless Earth, their cruel stepmother,
Regards not. On the waste of iron fields,
Untam'd, intractable, no harvests wave:
Pomona hates them, and the clownish god
Who tends the garden. In this frozen world
Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal
Is earn'd with ease; for here the fruitful spawn
Of ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board
With generous fare and luxury profuse.
These are their bread, the only bread they know:
These, and their willing slave the deer that crops
The shrubby herbage on their meagre hills.
Girt by the burning zone, not thus the South
Her swarthy sons in either Ind maintains:
Or thirsty Libya; from whose fervid loins
The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams
Th' affrighted wilderness. The mountain-herd,
Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords ;
Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce,
So perfect, so delicious, as the shoals
Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood

A generous pulp: the cocoa swells on high
With milky riches; and in horrid mail
The crisp ananas wraps its poignant sweets.
Earth's vaunted progeny; in ruder air
Too coy to flourish, even too proud to live;
Or hardly rais'd by artificial fire

To vapid life. Here with a mother's smile
Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn.
Here buxom Ceres reigns: the autumnal sea
In boundless billows fluctuates o'er their plains.
What suits the climate best, what suits the men,
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 fountains lead;
Now let me wander through 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 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 reclin'd,
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 th' 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 Paon, 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 vigor 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 th' alternate fits of feverish mirth,

Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas'd,

Its tumid fervor, and tempestuous course;
Kind Nature tempts not to such gifts as these.
But here in livid ripeness melts the grape :
Here, finish'd by invigorating suns,

Through the green shade the golden orange glows:
Spontaneous here the turgid melon yields

*The burning fever.

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 degenerate sons,
How would they scorn the joys of modern time.

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With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!
Too happy they! but wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on sloth begot disease.

Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain
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 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 chaf'd pebbles hurl'd, yields wholesome, pure,
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 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, indolent and cold,
Toys with its duty, animate with wine

Th' 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

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 liberal arts are won;
And Hercules grew strong. But when 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 generous minds.
Oh! seldom may the fated hours return
Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste,
Except when life declines, even sober cups.
Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm,
The sapless habit daily to bedew,

And gives 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 dextrous 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 fervor 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

Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years, The growth advances: till the larger tubes

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 powers.
Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,
Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels
The loitering crudities that burden life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Th' 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;

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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;
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, when life must downward tend.
For still the beating tide consolidates

The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still
To the weak throbs of th' ill-supported heart.
This languishing, these strength'ning by degrees

* In the human body, as well as in those of other ani. mals, 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 pro. portion as these small vessels become solid, the larger must of course become 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.

To hard unyielding unelastic bone,
Through 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 Heav'n 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 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 crush 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:

Such the reward of rude and sober life; Of labor such. By health the peasant's toil Is well repaid; if exercise were pain Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like them Laconia nurs'd of old her hardy sons; And Rome's unconquer'd legions urg'd their 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 subdu'd, 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, enwrap the limbs in balm, And shed a charming languor o'er the soul. Nor when bright Winter sows with prickly fro The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blasts This way and that convolve the lab'ring wood

"Till the great FATHER through the lifeless gloom My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain Extend his arm to light another world, And bid new planets roll by other laws.

For through the regions of unbounded space,
Where unconfin'd 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.

Book III.

EXERCISE.

Or fogs relent, no season should confine
Or to the cloister'd gallery or arcade.
Go, climb the mountain; from th' ethereal sour
Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn
Beams o'er the hills; go, mount th' exulting steed
Already, see, the deep-mouth'd beagles caeth
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 horn.

But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale Exceed your strength, a sport of less fatigue, Not less delightful, the prolific stream

THROUGH various toils th' adventurous Muse has Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er

past;

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 practis'd in th' 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 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 care 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 wint'ry Heaven. 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 rabid Sirius fires th' autumnal noon. His habit pure with plain and temperate meals, Robust with labor, and by custom steel'd To every casualty of varied life; Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast, And uninfected breathes the mortal south.

A stony channel rolls its rapid maze.
Swarms with the silver fry. Such, through the bound
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
Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song; though not a purer stream,
Through meads more flowery, more romantic grove
Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred fo
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
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
The struggling panting prey: while vernal clouds
And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,
And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton swarms
Form'd on the Samian school, or those of Ind,
There are who think these pastimes scarce humane
Yet in my mind (and not relentless 1)
His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.

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