And more gigantic still th' impending trees The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow. Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. But where the stomach, indolent and cold, Are these the confines of some fairy world?

Toys with its duty, animate with wine A land of genii? Say, beyond these wilds

Th’insipid stream: though golden Ceres yields What unknown nations :—if indeed beyond A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught; Aught habitable lies. And whither leads,

Perhaps more active. Wines unmix'd, and all To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,

The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyss That subterraneous way? Propitious maids, Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught, Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread And furious with intoxicating fire; This trembling ground. The task remains to sing Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw'd Your gifts (so Pæon, so the powers of health

Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years, Command) to praise your crystal element:

Embalm'd in fiery quintessence of wine, The chief ingredient in heaven's various works ; The puny wonders of the reptile world, Whose flexile genius sparkles in the gem,

The tender rudiments of life, the slim Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;

Unravellings of minute anatomy, The vehicle, the source, of nutriment

Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain. And life, to all that vegetate or live.

We curse not wine: the vile excess we blame; O comfortable streams! With eager lips

More fruitful than th' accumulated board And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught New life in you; fresh vigour fills their veins. Faster and surer swells the vital tide; No warmer cups the rural ages knew;

And with more active poison, than the floods None warıner sought the sires of human kind. Of grosser crudity convey, pervades Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days The far remote meanders of our frame. Felt not th' alternate fits of feverish mirth,

Ah! sly deceiver ! Branded o'er and o'er, And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas'd, Yet still believ'd! Exulting o'er the wreck They knew no pains but what the tender soul Of sober vows !-But the Parnasian maids With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget. Another time perhaps shall sing the joys, Blest with divine immunity from ails,

The fatal charms, the many woes of wine; Long centuries they liv'd; their only fate

Perhaps its various tribes, and various powers. Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death. Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl, Oh! could those worthies from the world of gods Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife, Return to visit their degenerate sons,

Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expels How would they scorn the joys of modern time, The loitering crudities that burden life; With all our art and toil improv'd to pain!

And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Too happy they! but wealth brought luxury, Th' obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
And luxury on sloth begot disease. [disdain Is full of chances, which by habit's power

Learn temperance, friends; and hear without To learn to bear is easier than to shuo.
The choice of water. Thus the Coan sage

Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold, Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of every school. Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine What least of foreign principles partakes

To moisten well the thirsty suffrages;
Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch Say how, unseason'd to the midnight frays
Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air;

Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend
The most insipid; the most void of smell.

With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur’d? Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees: Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale By slow degrees the liberal arts are won; For ever boil, alike of winter frosts

And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth And summer's heat secure. The crystal stream,

The brows of care, indulge your festive vein Through rocks resounding, or for many a mile In cups by well-inform'd experience found O'er the chaf'd pebbles hurl'd, yields wholesome, The least your bane: and only with your friends. pure,

There are sweet follies; frailties to be seen Aud mellow draughts; except when winter thaws, By friends alone, and men of generous minds. And half the mountains melt into the tide.

Oh! seldom may the fated tours return Though thirst were e'er so resolute, avoid

Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste, The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods Except when life declines, even sober cups. As fill from Lethe Belgia's slow canals;

Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, (With rest corrupt, with vegetation green;

With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, Squalid with generation, and the birth

The sapless habit daily to bedew, Of little monsters ;) till the power of fire

And give the hesitating wheels of life Has from profane embraces disengag'd

Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys: The violated lymph. The virgin stream

And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows, In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.

To squander the reliefs of age and pain ! Nothing like simple element dilutes

What dextrous thousands, just within the goal

EXERCISE.

a

Of wild debauch, direct their nightly course! Between creation and abhorr'd decay:
Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days,

It ever did; perhaps and ever will.
No morning admonitions shock the head.

New worlds are still emerging from the deep;
But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace, The old descending, in their turns to rise.
And that incurable disease old age,
In youthful bodies more severely felt,

BOOK III.
More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime:
Except kind nature by some hasty blow

Through various toils th’adventurous Muse has past; Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate'er

But half the toil, and more than half, remains. Beyond its natural fervour hurries on

Rude is her theme, and hardly fit for song ;
The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, Plain, and of little ornament; and I
High-season'd fare, or exercise to toil

But little practis'd in th' Aonian arts.
Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life,

Yet not in vain such labours have we tried, And sows the temples with untimely snow.

If aught these lays the fickle health confirm. When life is new, the ductile fibres feel

To

you, ye delicate, I write; for you The heart's increasing force; and, day by day, I tame my youth to philosophic cares, The growth advances: till the larger tubes,

And grow still paler by the midnight lamp. Acquiring (from their elemental veins,

Not to debilitate with timorous rules Condens’d to solid chords) a firmer tone,

A hardy frame; nor needlessly to brave Sustain, and just sustaiu, th’impetuous blood.

Inglorious dangers, proud of mortal strength; Here stops the growth. Withi overbearing pulse Is all the lesson that in wholesome years And pressure, still the great destroy the small; Concerns the strong. His care were ill bestow'd Still with the ruins of tie small grow strong. Who would with warm effeminacy nurse Life glows mean time; amid the grinding force The thriving oak, which on the mountain's brow Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes,

Bears all the blasts that sweep the wint'ry heav'n. Its various functions vigorously are plied

Behold the labourer of the glebe, who toils By strong machinery; and in solid health

In dust, in rain, in cold and sultry skies; The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease. Save but the grain from mildews and the flood, But tlie full ocean ebbs: there is a point,

Nought anxious he what sickly stars ascend. By nature fix'd, whence life must downward tend. He knows no laws by Esculapius given; For still the beating tide consolidates

He studies none. Yet him nor midnight fogs The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still

Infest, nor those envenom'd shafts that fly
To the weak throbs of th’ill-supported heart. When rabid Sirius fires th' autumnal noon.
This languishing, these strength'ning by degrees His habit pure with plain and temperate meals,
To hard, unyielding, unelastic bone,

Robust with labour, and by custom steel'd
Through tedious channels the congealing flood To every casualty of varied life;
Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on;

Serene he bears the peevish eastern blast,
It loiters still: and now it stirs no more.

And uninfected breathes the mortal south. This is the period few attain; the death

Such the reward of rude and sober life; Of nature; thus (so heav'n ordain'd it) life

Of labour such. By health the peasant's toil Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang'd, Is well repaid; if exercise were pain Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate;

Indeed, and temperance pain. By arts like these And Homer live immortal as his song. [stood Laconia nurs'd of old her hardy sons;

What does not fade? The tower that long had And Rome's unconquer'd legions urg'd their way, The crush of thunder and the warring winds, Unhurt, through every toil in every clime. Shook by the slow but sure destroyer time,

Toil, and be strong. By toil the flaccid nerves Now bangs in doubtful ruins o’er its base.

Grow firm, and gain a more compacted tone; And Ainty pyramids, and walls of brass,

The greener juices are by toil subdu’d, Descend: the Babylonian spires are sunk;

Mellow'd, and subtiliz'd; the vapid old Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.

Expell’d, and all the rancour of the blood. Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,

Come, my companions, ye who feel the charms And tottering empires crush by their own weight. Of nature and the year; come, let us stray This huge rotundity we tread grows old;

Where chance or fancy leads our roving walk: And all those worlds that roll around the sun, Come, while the soft voluptuous breezes fan The sun himself, shall die; and ancient night The fleecy heavens, enwrap the limbs in balm, Again involve the desolate abyss:

And shed a charming languor o'er the soul. Till the great Father through the lifeless gloom Nor when bright winter sows with prickly frost Extend his arm to light another world,

The vigorous ether, in unmanly warmth And bid new planets roll by other laws.

Indulge at home; nor even when Eurus' blasts For through the regions of unbounded space, This way and that convolve the lab’ring woods. Where unconfin’d Omnipotence has room,

My liberal walks, save when the skies in rain Being, in various systems, fluctuates still

Or fogs relent, no season should confine

Or to the cloister'd gallery or arcade.

Attain'd and equal to his moderate mind; Go, climb the mountain; from th' ethereal source His life approv'd by all the wise and good, Imbibe the recent gale. The cheerful morn

Even envied by the vain) the peaceful groves Beams o'er the hills; go mount th' exulting steed. Of Epicurus, from this stormy world, Already, see, the deep-mouth'd beagles catch Receive to rest; of all ungrateful cares The tainted mazes; and, on eager sport

Absolv'd, and sacred from the selfish crowd. Intent with emulous impatience try

Happiest of men! if the same soil invites Each doubtful trace. Or, if a nobler prey

A chosen few, companions of his youth, Delight you more, go chase the desperate deer; Once fellow-rakes perhaps, now rural friends; And through its deepest solitudes awake

With whom in easy commerce to pursue The vocal forest with the jovial horn.

Nature's free charms, and vie for sylvan fame: But if the breathless chase o'er hill and dale A fair ambition ; void of strife or guile, Exceed your strength; a sport of less fatigue, Or jealousy, or pain to be outdone. Not less delightful the prolific stream

Who plans th' enchanted garden, who directs Affords. The crystal rivulet, that o'er

The visto best, and best conducts the stream; A stony channel rolls its rapid maze,

Whose groves the fastest thicken and ascend; Swarms with the silver fry. Such, through the Whom first the welcome spring salutes; who shows bounds

The earliest bloom, the sweetest proudest charms Of pastoral Stafford, runs the brawling Trent; Of Flora; who best gives Pomona's juice Such Eden, sprung from Cumbrian mountains; such To match the sprightly genius of champaign. The Esk, o'erhung with woods; and such the stream Thrice happy days! in rural business past: On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,

Blest winter nights! when as the genial fire Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays

Cheers the wide hall, his cordial family
Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains, With soft domestic arts the hours beguile,
Unknown in song: though not a purer stream, And pleasing talk that starts no timorous fame,
Through meads more flowery or more romantic With witless wantonness to hunt it down:
groves,

Or through the fairy land of tale or song
Rolls toward the western main. Hail, sacred flood! Delighted wander, in fictitious fates
May still thy hospitable swains be blest

Engag'd and all that strikes humanity:
In rural innocence; thy mountains still

Till lost in fable, they the stealing hour Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods Of timely rest forget. Sometimes at eve For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay

His neighbours lift the latch, and bless unbid With painted meadows, and the golden grain! His festal roof; while, o'er the light repast, Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new, And sprightly cups, they mix in social joy; Sportive and petulant, and charm'd with toys, And, through the maze of conversation, trace In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd:

Whate'er amuses or improves the mind. Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks, Sometimes at eve (for I delight to taste With the well-imitated fly to hook

The native zest and flavour of the fruit, The eager trout, and with the slender line

Where sense grows wild and takes of no manure) And yielding rod solicit to the shore

The decent, honest, cheerful husbandman The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds Should drown his labours in my friendly bowl; And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,

And at my table find himself at home. And from the deeps call’d forth the wanton swarms. Whate'er you study, in whate'er you sweat,

Form'd on the Samian school, or those of ind, Indulge your taste. Some love the manly foils; There are who think these pastimes scarce humane. The tennis some; and some the graceful dance. Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)

Others more hardy, range the purple heath, His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.

Or naked stubble; where from field to field But if through genuine tenderness of heart, The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight; Or secret want of relish for the game,

Eager amid the rising cloud to pour You shun the glories of the chase, nor care

The gun's unerring thunder: and there are To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields Whom still the meed of the green archer charms. A soft amusement, an humane delight.

He chooses best, whose labour entertains To raise th' insipid nature of the ground;

His vaçant fancy most: the toil you hate Or tame its savage genius to the grace

Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs. Of careless sweet rusticity, that seems

As beauty still has blemish; and the mind The amiable result of happy chance,

The most accomplish'd its imperfect side; Is to create; and gives a godlike joy,

Few bodies are there of that happy mould Which every year improves. Nor thou disdain

But some one part is weaker than the rest :
To check the lawless riot of the trees,

The legs, perhaps, or arms refuse their load,
To plant the grove, or turn the barren mould. Or the chest labours. These assiduously,
O happy he! whom, when his years decline, But gently, in their proper arts employ'd,
(His fortune and his fame by worthy means

Acquire a vigour and springy activity