To which they were not born. But weaker parts
Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.

Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves
Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire.
The prudent, even in every moderate walk,
At first but saunter; and by slow degrees
Increase their pace. This doctrine of the wise
Well knows the master of the flying steed.
First from the goal the manag'd coursers play
On bended reins: as yet the skilful youth
Repress their foamy pride; but every breath
The race grows warmer, and the tempest swells;
Till all the fiery mettle has its way,

And the thick thunder hurries o'er the plain.
When all at once from indolence to toil
You spring, the fibres by the hasty shock
Are tir'd and crack'd, before their unctuous coats,
Compress'd, can pour the lubricating balm.
Besides, collected in the passive veins,
The purple mass a sudden torrent rolls,
O'erpowers the heart and deluges the lungs
With dangerous inundation; oft the source
Of fatal woes; a cough that foams with blood,
Asthma and feller peripneumony,

Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

Th' athletic fool, to whom what heav'n deny'd
Of soul, is well compensated in limbs,
Oft from his rage, or brainless frolic, feels
His vegetation and brute force decay.
The men of better clay and finer mould
Know nature, feel the human dignity;
And scorn to vie with oxen or with apes.
Pursu'd prolixly, even the gentlest toil
Is waste of health: repose by small fatigue
Is earn'd; and (where your habit is not prone
To thaw) by the first moisture of the brows.
The fine and subtle spirits cost too much
To be profus'd, too much the roscid balm.
But when the hard varieties of life
You toil to learn; or try the dusty chase,
Or the warm deeds of some important day:
Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
In wish'd repose; nor court the fanning gale,
Nor taste the spring. O! by the sacred tears
Of widows, orphans, mothers, sisters, sires,
Forbear! No other pestilence has driven
Such myriads o'er th' irremeable deep.
Why this so fatal, the sagacious Muse
Through nature's cunning labyrinths could trace:
But there are secrets which who knows not now,
Must, ere he reach them, climb the heapy Alps
Of science; and devote seven years to toil.
Besides, I would not stun your patient ears
With what it little boots you to attain.
He knows enough, the mariner, who knows
Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools
boil,

What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in th' Ionian wave;
Whence those impetuous currents in the main,
Which neither oar nor sail can stem; and why

The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure
As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven.

In ancient times, when Rome with Athens vied For polish'd luxury and useful arts,

All hot and reeking from th' Olympic strife,
And warm palæstra, in the tepid bath
Th' athletic youth relax'd their weary limbs.
Soft oils bedew'd them, with the grateful pow'rs
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, degenerate 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 streams,
And least obnoxious to the styptic air,
Which breathe through straighter and more callous
The temper'd Scythian hence, half-naked treads
His boundless snows, nor rues th' inclement heaven;
And hence our painted ancestors defied
The east; nor curs'd, like us, their fickle sky.

[pores.

The body moulded by the clime, endures Th' equator heats, or hyperborean frost: Except by habits foreign to its turn, Unwise you counteract its forming pow'r. 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 heav'n, To fortify their bodies, some frequent The gelid cistern; and, where nought 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 even 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
Th' 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 treasur'd 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 overcharg'd 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; Oh! from such inbuman 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
Reclin'd, or saunt'ring 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 am'rous 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 diffus'd
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 matur'd,
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
Portend to sanity, though prudent seers
Reveal'd of old, and men of deathless fame,
We would not to the superstitious mind
Suggest new throbs, new vanities of fear.
'Tis ours to teach you from the peaceful night
To banish omens and all restless woes.

In study some protract the silent hours,
Which others consecrate to mirth and wine;
And sleep till noon, and hardly live till night.
But surely this redeems not from the shades

One hour of life. Nor does it nought avail
What season you to drowsy Morpheus give
Of th' ever-varying circle of the day;

Or whether, through the tedious winter gloom,
You tempt the midnight or the morning damps.
The body, fresh and vigorous from repose,
Defies the early fogs; but, by the toils
Of wakeful day, exhausted and unstrung,
Weakly resists the night's unwholesome breath.
The grand discharge, th' effusion of the skin,
Slowly impair'd, the languid maladies

Creep on, and through the sick'ning functions steal:
As, when the chilling east invades the spring,
The delicate narcissus pines away
In hectic languor; and a slow disease
Taints all the family of flowers, condemn'd
To cruel heav'ns. But why, already prone
To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane?
O shame! O pity! nipt with pale quadrille,
And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies!
By toil subdued, the warrior and the hind
Sleep fast and deep: their active functions soon
With generous streams the subtle tubes supply;
And soon the tonic irritable nerves

Feel the fresh impulse, and awake the soul.
The sons of indolence with long repose
Grow torpid; and, with slowest Lethe drunk,
Feebly and ling'ringly return to life,
Blunt every sense, and powerless every limb.
Ye, prone to sleep (whom sleeping most annoys,)
On the hard mattress, or elastic couch,
Extend your limbs, and wean yourselves from sloth;
Nor grudge the lean projector, of dry brain
And springy nerves, the blandishments of down;
Nor envy while the buried Bacchanal
Exhales his surfeit in prolixer dreams.

He without riot, in the balmy feast
Of life, the wants of nature has supply'd,
Who rises cool, serene, and full of soul.
But pliant nature more or less demands,
As custom forms her; and all sudden change
She hates of habit, even from bad to good.
If faults in life, or new emergencies,
From habits urge you by long time confirm'd,
Slow may the change arrive, and stage by stage;
Slow as the shadow o'er the dial moves,
Slow as the stealing progress of the year.

Observe the circling year. How unperceiv'd
Her seasons change! Behold, by slow degrees,
Stern winter tam'd into a ruder spring!
The ripen'd spring a milder summer glows;
Departing summer sheds Pomona's store;
And aged autumn brews the winter storm.
Slow as they come, these changes come not void
Of mortal shocks: the cold and torrid reigns,
The two great periods of th' important year,
Are in their first approaches seldom safe:
Funereal autumn all the sickly dread,
And the black fates deform the lovely spring.
He well advis'd, who taught our wiser sires
Early to borrow Muscovy's warm spoils,
Ere the first frost has touch'd the tender blade;

And late resign them, though the wanton spring
Should deck her charms with all her sister's rays:
For while the effluence of the skin maintains
Its native measure, the pleuretic spring
Glides harmless by; and autumn, sick to death
With sallow quartans, no contagion breathes.
I in prophetic numbers could unfold
The omens of the year: what seasons teem
With what diseases; what the humid south
Prepares, and what the demon of the east:
But you, perhaps, refuse the tedious song.
Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold,
Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you,
Skill'd to correct the vices of the sky,
And taught already how to each extreme
To bend your life. But should the public bane
Infect you; or some trespass of your own,
Or flaw of nature, hint mortality:
Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides
Along the spine, through all your torpid limbs;
When first the head throbs, or the stomach feels
A sickly load, and weary pain the loins;
Be Celsus call'd: the fates come rushing on;
The rapid fates admit of no delay.
While wilful you, and fatally secure,
Expect to-morrow's more auspicious sun,
The growing pest, whose infancy was weak
And easy vanquish'd, with triumphant sway
O'erpowers your life. For want of timely care,
Millions have died of medicable wounds.

Ah! in what perils is vain life engag'd!
What slight neglects, what trivial faults destroy
The hardiest frame! of indolence, of toil,
We die; of want, of superfluity:

The all-surrounding heaven, the vital air,
Is big with death. And, though the putrid south
Be shut; though no convulsive agony
Shake, from the deep foundations of the world,
Th' imprison'd plagues; a secret venom oft
Corrupts the air, the water, and the land.
What livid deaths has sad Byzantium seen!
How oft has Cairo, with a mother's woe,
Wept o'er her slaughter'd sons, and lonely streets!
Even Albion, girt with less malignant skies,
Albion the poison of the gods has drank,
And felt the sting of monsters all her own.

Ere yet the fell Plantagenets had spent
Their ancient rage, at Bosworth's purple field;
While, for which tyrant England should receive,
Her legions in incestuous murders mix'd,
And daily horrors; till the fates were drunk
With kindred blood by kindred hands profus'd:
Another plague of more gigantic arm
Arose, a monster never known before,
Rear'd from Cocytus its portentous head;
This rapid fury not, like other pests,
Pursu'd a gradual course, but in a day
Rush'd as a storm o'er half th' astonished isle,
And strew'd with sudden carcases the land.

First through the shoulders, or whatever part Was seiz'd the first, a fervid vapour sprung; With rash combustion thence, the quivering spark

Shot to the heart, and kindled all within;
And soon the surface caught the spreading fires.
Through all the yielding pores, the melted blood
Gush'd out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag'd
The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev'd
The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
Desperate of ease, impatient of their pain,
They toss'd from side to side. In vain the stream
Ran full and clear, they burnt, and thirsted still.
The restless arteries with rapid blood

Beat strong and frequent. Thick and pantingly
The breath was fetch'd, and with huge lab'rings
At last a heavy pain oppress'd the head, [heav'd.
A wild delirium came; their weeping friends.
Were strangers now, and this no home of theirs.
Harass'd with toil on toil, the sinking powers
Lay prostrate and o'erthrown; a ponderous sleep
Wrapt all the senses up: they slept and died.
In some a gentle horror crept at first
O'er all the limbs; the sluices of the skin
Withheld their moisture, till by art provok'd
The sweats o'erflow'd; but in a clammy tide:
Now free and copious, now restrain'd and slow;
Of tinctures various, as the temperature
Had mix'd the blood; and rank with fetid streams:
As if the pent-up humours by delay
Were grown more fell, more putrid, and malign.
Here lay their hopes (though little hope remain'd ;)
With full effusion of perpetual sweats

To drive the venom out. And here the fates
Were kind, that long they linger'd not in pain.
For, who surviv'd the sun's diurnal race,
Rose from the dreary gates of hell redeem'd:
Some the sixth hour oppress'd, and some the third.
Of many thousands, few untainted 'scap'd;

Of those infected, fewer 'scap'd alive;
Of those who liv'd, some felt a second blow;
And whom the second spar'd, a third destroy'd.
Frantic with fear, they sought by flight to shun
The fierce contagion. O'er the mournful land
Th' infected city pour'd her hurrying swarms:
Rous'd by the flames that fir'd her seats around,
Th' infected country rush'd into the town.
Some, sad at home, and in the desart some,
Abjur'd the fatal commerce of mankind
In vain where'er they fled, the fates pursu'd.
Others, with hopes more specious, cross'd the main,
To seek protection in far distant skies;

But none they found. It seem'd the general air,
From pole to pole, from Atlas to the east,
Was then at enmity with English blood.
For, but the race of England. all were safe
In foreign climes; nor did this fury taste
The foreign blood which England then contain'd.
Where should they fly? The circumambient heaven
Involv'd them still; and every breeze was bane.
Where find relief? The salutary art
Was mute, and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave. [prayers;
To Heaven with suppliant rites they sent their
Heaven heard them not. Of every hope depriv'd;
Fatigu'd with vain resources; and subdued

With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear;
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,
Nor aught was seen, but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. "Twas all the business then,
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell: and oft one bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained.
Ye guardian gods, on whom the fates depend
Of tottering Albion! ye eternal fires, [powers,
That lead through heaven the wandering year! ye
That o'er th' encircling elements preside!
May nothing worse than what this age has seen
Arrive! Enough abroad, enough at home
Has Albion bled. Here a distemper'd heaven
Has thinn'd her cities, from those lofty cliffs
That awe proud Gaul, to Thule's wint'ry reign:
While in the west, beyond th' Atlantic foam,
Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have dy'd
The death of cowards, and of common men ;
Sunk void of wounds, and fall'n without renown.
But from these views the weeping Muses turn,
And other themes invite my wandering song.

BOOK IV.

THE PASSIONS.

The choice of aliment, the choice of air,
The use of toil, and all external things,
Already sung; it now remains to trace
What good, what evil from ourselves proceeds:
And how the subtle principle within
Inspires with health, or mines with strange decay
The passive body. Ye poetic shades,
Who know the secrets of the world unseen,
Assist my song! For, in a doubtful theme
Engag'd, I wander through mysterious ways.

There is, they say (and I believe there is,)
A spark within us of th' immortal fire,
That animates and moulds the grosser frame;
And, when the body sinks, escapes to heaven,
Its native seat, and mixes with the gods.
Meanwhile this heavenly particle pervades
The mortal elements; in every nerve

It thrills with pleasure, or grows mad with pain:
And, in its secret conclave, as it feels
The body's woes and joys, this ruling power
Wields at its will the dull material world,
And is the body's health or malady.

By its own toil the gross corporeal frame
Fatigues, extenuates, or destroys itself.
Nor less the labours of the mind corrode
The solid fabric: for by subtle parts,
And viewless atoms, secret nature moves
The mighty wheels of this stupendous world.
By subtle fluids pour'd through subtle tubes,
The natural, vital functions are perform'd.
By these the stubborn aliments are tam'd;
The toiling heart distributes life and strength;
These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these
Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air.

But 'tis not thought (for still the soul's employ'd,)