But if through genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chase, nor care
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise th' insipid nature of the ground;
Or tame its savage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems
The amiable result of happy chance,
Is to create; and gives a godlike joy,
Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain
To check the lawless riot of the trees,
To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould.
O happy he! whom, when his years decline,
(His fortune and his fame by worthy means
Attain'd, and equal to his moderate mind;
His life approv'd by all the wise and good,
Even envied by the vain,) the peaceful groves
Of Epicurus, from this stormy world,
Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares
Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd.
Happiest of men! if the same soil invites
A chosen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends;
With whom in easy commerce to pursue
Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame :
A fair ambition; void of strife or guile,
Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone.
Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs
The vista best, and best conducts the stream:
Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend;
Whom first the welcome Spring salutes; who shows
The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms
Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice
To match the sprightly genius of champaign.
Thrice-happy days! in rural business past:
Blest winter nights! when, as the genial fire
Cheers the wide hall, his cordial family
With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
Or through the fairy-land of tale or song
Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
Engag'd, and all that strikes humanity:
Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour
Of timely rest forget. Sometimes, at eve
His neighbors lift the latch, and bless unbid
His festal roof; while, o'er the light repast,
And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy;
And, through the maze of conversation, trace
Whate'er amuses or improves the mind.
Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste
The native zest and flavor of the fruit,
Where sense grows wild, and tastes of no manure)
The decent, honest, cheerful husbandman
Should drown his labor in my friendly bowl;
And at my table find himself at home.

Whate'er you study, in whate'er you sweat,
Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils;
The tennis some; and some the graceful dance.
Others, more hardy, range the purple heath,
Or naked stubble; where, from field to field,
The sounding coveys urge their laboring flight;
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour
The gun's unerring thunder: and there are
Whom still the meed* of the green archer charms.
He chooses best, whose labor entertains

This word is much used by some of the old English poets, and signifies reward or prize.

His vacant fancy most: the toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs.
As beauty still has blemish, and the mind
The most accomplish'd its imperfect side,
Few bodies are there of that happy mould
But some one part is weaker than the rest:
The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load,
Or the chest labors. These assiduously,
But gently, in their proper arts employ'd,
Acquire a vigor and springy activity,

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 peripneumonyt,

Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

Th' athletic fool, to whom what Heaven denied 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

†The inflammation of the lungs,

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 Palestra, 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, 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 labor: 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,

He not the safe vicissitudes of life
Without some shock endures; ill-fitted be
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 powe
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 word
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 charma
Are lothesome. 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 tal
From foreign themes recall my wandering song
Some labor 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

pores.

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.
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 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 rigors 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.

The growing pest, whose infancy was weak
And easy vanquish'd, with triumphant sway
O'erpow'rs 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 the astonish'd isle,
And strew'd with sudden carcasses the land.

First, through the shoulders, or whatever part Was seiz'd the first, a fervid vapor 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 yielded pores, the melted blood Gush'd out in smoky 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 heav'd.

At last a heavy pain oppress'd the head,

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 steams:
As if the pent-up humors 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 shen
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 desert 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 mar
To seek protection in far-distant skies;
But none they found. It seem'd the general a
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 continë
Where should they fly? The circumambient Heate
Involv'd them still; and every breeze was base
Where find relief! The salutary art
Was mute; and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.
To Heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray's
Heav'n heard them not. Of every hope de nive
Fatigued with vain resources; and subdu'd
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 the
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell: and oft one bed, they say,
The sick'ning, dying, and the dead contain'd.

Ye guardian gods, on whom the fates depend
Of tottering Albion! ye eternal fires
That lead through Heav'n the wandering year e

powers

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 wintry reign;
While in the west, beyond the Atlantic foam,
Her bravest sons, keen for the fight, have died
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,