Nature profufes moft, and moft the taste
Demands: The fountain, edg'd with racy wine
Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty fouls.
The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
Supports in elfe intolerable air;

While the cool palm, the lantai, and the grove
That waves on gloomy Lelanon, affuage
The tornid heil that beans upon thei: heads.
Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;
Now let me wander thr your gelid reign.
I burn to view th' enthufiaftic wilds
By mortal elfe untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks
Whence glide the ft. cams renown'din ancientfong.
Here from the defert down the rumbling steep
Firft fprings the Nile; here buits the founding Po
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
A mighty flood to water half the caft;
And there, in Gothic folitude reclin'd,
The cheerlofs Tanais pours his hoary urn.
What folemn twilight, what ftupendous fhades,
Enwrap thefe infant floods! Tho' ev'ry nerve
A facred horror thrills, a pleafing fear
Glides o'er my frame. The foreft deepens round,
And, more gigantic ftill, th' impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom.
Are thefe the confines of fome fairy world,
A land of Genii? Say, beyond thefe wilds
What unknown nations, if indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies? And whither leads,
To what strange regions, or of blifs or pain,
That fubterraneous way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread
This trembling ground. The task remains to fing
Your gifts (fo Paon, fo the pow'rs of health
Command), to praise your crystal element:
The chief ingredient in Heaven's various works;
Whofe flexile genius fparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the fource, 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: freth vigour fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
None warmer fought the fires of human kind
Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days
Felt not th' alternate fits of fev'rish mirth
And fick dejection. Still ferene and pleas'd,
They knew no pains but what the tender foul
With pleafure yields to, and would ne'er forget.
Bleft with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they liv'd; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather fleep than death.
Oh! could thofe worthies from the world of gods
Return to vifit their degen'rate fons,
How would they fcorn the joys of modern time,
With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!
Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on floth begot disease. [difdain
Learn temp'rance, friends; and hear without

* Hippocrates.

The choice of water. Thus the * Coan fage
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of ev'ry school:
What leaft of foreign principles partakes
Is beft; the lightest then; what bears the touch
Of fire the leaft, and fooneft mounts in air;
The most infipid, the most void of smell.
Such the rude mountain from its horrid fides
Pours down; fuch waters in the fandy vale
For ever boil, alike of winter frosts

And fummer's heat fecure. The crystal fream,
Through rocks refounding, or for many a mile
O'er the chaf 'd pebbles hurl'd, yields wholefoue,

pure,

And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Tho' thirft were ne'er fo refolute, avoid
The fordid lake, and all fuch drowy floods
As fill from Lethe Belgia's flow canals
With reft corrupt, with vegetation green;
Squalid with generation, and the birth
Of little monsters), till the pow'r of fire
Has from profane embraces difengag'd
The violated lymph. The virgin fiream,
In boiling, wattes its finer foul in air.

Nothing like fimple element dilutes
The food, or gives the chyle fo foon to flow.
But where the ftomach, indolently given,
Toys with its duty, animate with wine
Th' infipid ftream: tho' golden Ceres vields
A more voluptuous, a more fprightly draught;
Perhaps more active. Wine uninix'd, and all
The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyis
Of fermentation fpring; with spirit fraught,
And furious with intoxicating fire;
Retard concoction, and preferve unthaw'd
Th'embodied mafs. You fee what countless years,
Embalm'd in fiery quinteffence of wine,
The puny wonders of the reptile world,
The tender rudiments of life, the flim
Unravellings of minute anatomy,
Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain.
We curfe not wine; the vile excefs we blame,
More fruitful than th' accumulated board
Of pain and mifery. For the fubtle draught
Fafter and furer fwells the vital tide;
And with more active poison, than the floods
Of groffer crudity convey, pervades
The far remote meanders of our frame.
Ah fly deceiver! branded o'er and o'er,
Yet ftill believ'd! exulting o'er the wreck
Of fober vows! But the Parnaffian Maids
Another time †, perhaps, fhall fing the joys,
The fatal charms, the many woes, of wine;
Perhaps its various tribes and various pow'rs.

Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl, Nor ev'ry trefpafs fhun. The fev'rith ftrife, Rous'd by the rare debauch, fubdues, expels The loit'ring crudities that burthen life; And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears Th' obftructed tubes. Befides, this reftlefs world Is full of chances, which by habit's pow'r To learn to bear, is easier than to fhun.

+ See Book IV,

Ab!

Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
Or facred country calls, with mellowing wine
To moisten well the thirty fuffrages;
Say how, unfeafon'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 flow degrees;
By flow degrees the lib'ral arts are won,
And Hercules grew ftrong. But when you finooth
The brows of care, indulge your feftive vein
In cues by well-inform'd experience found
The leaft your bane, and only with your friends.
There are fweet follies; frailties to be feen
By friends alone, and men of gen'rous minds.
Oh feldom may the fated hours return
Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste,
Except when life declines, ev'n fober cups.
Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,
With frugal nectar, fmooth and flow, with balm
The faplefs habit daily to bedew,
And give the hesitating wheels of life
Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys:
And is it wife, when youth with pleafure flows,
To fquander the reliefs of age and pain ?

What dextrous thoufands juft within the goal
Of wild debauch direct their nightly courfe!
Perhaps no fickly qualms bedim their days,
No morning admonitions fhock the head.
But, ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace,
And that incurable difeafe, old age,
In youthful bodies more feverely felt,
More fernly active, shakes their blasted prime,
Except kind Nature by fome hafty blow
Prevent the ling'ring fates. For know, whate'er
Beyond its natural fervour hurries on
The fanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl,
High-featon'd fare, or exercife to toil
Protracted; fpurs to its laft ftage tir'd life,
And fows the temples with untimely fnow.
When life is new, the ductile fibres feel
The heart's increasing force; and, day by day,
The growth advances: till the larger tubes,
Acquiring (from their elemental veins
Condens'd to folid chords) a firmer tone,
Suftain, and juft fuftain, th' impetuous blood.
Here ftops the growth. With overbearing pulfe
And preffure, ftill the great deftroy the finall;
Still with the ruins of the fmall grow ftrong.
Life glows meantime amid the grinding force
Of viscous fluids and elaftic tubes;
Its various functions vigorously are plied
By ftrong machinery; and in folid 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 muft downwards tend.
For ftill the beating tide confolidates
The tubborn veffels, more reluctant ftill

To the weak throbs of th' ill-fupported heart.
This languishing, thefe ftrength ning by degrees
To hard unyielding unelaftic bone,

Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood
Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on :
It loiters ftill: and now it ftirs no more.
This is the period few attain, the death
Of nature. Thus (fo Heaven ordain'd it) life
Destroys itself: and, could these laws have
chang'd,

Neftor might now the fates of Troy relate,
And Homer live immortal as his fong.

What does not fade? The tow'r that long had

ftood

The cruth of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the flow but fure deftroyer Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base;
And flinty pyramids, and walls of brats,
Defcend: the Babylonian fpires are funk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time hakes the ftable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires ruth by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all thofe worlds that roll around the fun :
The fun himfelf fhall die, and ancient night
Again involve the defolate abyfs,
Till the great Father thro' the lifeless gloom
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
For thro' the regions of unbounded fpace,
Where unconfin'd Omnipotence has room,
Being, in various fyftems, fluctuates ftill
Between creation and abhorr'd decay;
It ever did, perhaps, and ever will.
New worlds are ftill emerging from the deep;
The old defcending, in their turns to rife.

But half the toil, and more than half, remains.
Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for fong;
Plain, and of little ornament; and I
But little practis'd in th' Aonian arts.
Yet not in vain fuch labours have we tried,
If aught thefe lays the fickle health confirm.
To you, ye delicate, I write; for you`
I tame my youth to philofophic cares,
And grow till paler by the midnight lamp.
Not to debilitate with timorous rules
A hardy frame; nor needlefsly to brave
Inglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength,
Is all the leffon that in wholefome years
Concerns the strong. His care were ill beftow'd,
Who would with warm effeminacy nurfe
The thriving oak which on the mountain's brow
Bears all the blafts that fweep the wint'ry heaven,

Behold

Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils In duft, in rain, in cold, and fultry skies: Save but the grain from mildews and the flood, Nought anxious he what fickly stars afcend. He knows no laws by Efculapius given, He ftudies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs Infeft, nor thofe envenom'd thafts that fly When rabid Sirius fires th' autumnal noon. His habit pure with plain and temperate meals, Robuft with labour, and by custom steel'd To ev'ry cafualty of varied life; Serene lie bears the peevith Eaftern blast, And uninfected breathes the mortal South.

Such the reward of rude and sober life, Of labour fuch. By health the peafant's toil Is well repaid, if exercife were pain Indeed, and temp'rance pain. By arts like thefe Laconia nurs'd of old her hardy fons; And Rome's unconquer'd legions urg'd their way Unhurt, thro' ev'ry toil, in ev'ry clime.

Toil, and be ftrong. By toil the flaccid nerves Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone; The greener juices are by toil fubdued, Mellow'd, and fubtiliz'd; 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 ftray Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk: Come, while the foft voluptuous breezes fan The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs with balm, And fhed a charming languor o'er the foul. Nor when bright Winter fows with prickly froft The vigorous ether, in unmanly warinth Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blafts This way and that convolve the lab'ring woods. My liberal walks, fave when the skies in rain Or fogs relent, no feafon fhould confine Or to the cloifter'd gallery or arcade. Go, climb the mountain; from th' ethereal fource Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn Beams o'er the hills; go, mount th' exulting fteed. Already, fee, the deep-mouth'd beagles catch The tainted mazes; and, on eager 1port Intent, with emulous impatience try Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey Delight you more, go chafe the defp'rate deer; And thro' its deepcft folitudes awake The vocal foreft with the jovial horn.

But if the breathlefs chace o'er hill and dale Exceed your ftrength, a fport of lefs fatigue, Not lefs delightful, the prolific ftream Affords. The cryftal rivulet, that o'er A ftony channel rolls its rapid maze, Swarms with the filver fry. Such, thro' the bounds Of paftoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent; Such Eden, fprung from Cumbrian mountains; ftream

fuch

The Efk, o'erhung with woods; and fuch the
On whofe Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-fick fwains,
Unknown in fong: tho' not a purer fream,
Thro' meads more flow'ry, or more romantic
gioves,

Rolls toward the western main. Hail, facred flood.
May ftill thy hofpitable fwains be blest
In rural innocence; thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful words
For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay
With painted meadows, and the golden grain!
Oft, with thy blooming fons, 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 fteps thy fairy banks,
With the well-imitated fly to hook
The eager trout, and, with the flender line,
And yielding rod, folicit to the fhore
The ftruggling panting prey; while vernal clouds
And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffied pool,
And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton fwarms.

Form'd on the Samian fchool, or thofe of led,
There are who think thefe pastimes scarce humane;
Yet in my mind (and not relenticfs 1)
His life is pure that wears no fouler flains.
But if thro' genuine tenderness of heart,
Or fecret want of relish for the game,
You fhun the glories of the chace, nor care
To haunt the peopled ftream; the garden yields
A foft amusement, an humane delight.
To raife th' infipid nature of the ground,
Or tame its favage genius to the grace
Of careless sweet rufticity, that feems
The amiable refult of happy chance,
Is to create; and gives a godlike joy,
Which every year improves. Nor thou difdam
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 mod rate mind;
His life approv'd by all the wife and good,
Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves
Of Epicurus, from this ftormy world,
Receive to reft, of all ungrateful cares
Abfolv'd, and facred from the felfith crowd!
Happieft of men, if the fame foil invites
A chofen few, companions of his youth,
Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends;
With whom in eafy commerce to puríve
Nature's free charms, and vie for lylvan fame !
A fair ambition, void of ftrife or guile,
Or jealoufy, or pain to be outdone,
Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs
The vifto beft, and beft conducts the ftream;
Whofe groves the fafteft thicken and ascend;
Whom firft the welcome fpring falutes; who fhews
The earliest bloom, the fweeteft, proudest charms
Of Flora; who beft gives Pomona's juice
To match the fprightly genius of champaign.
Thrice happy days, in rural bus'nefs país'd!
Bleft winter nights! when, as the genial fire
Cheers the wide hall, his cordial family
With foft domeftic arts the hours beguile,
And pleafing talk, that starts no timorous fame,
With witlefs wantonnefs to hunt it down;
Or thro' the fairy-land of tale or song
Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
Engag`d, and all that strikes humanity :