To vapid life. Here with a mother's smile
Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn
Here buxom Ceres reigns; Th' 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:

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While the cool Palm, the Plantain, and the grove
That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage

350

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 thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs.
With holy reverence I approach the rocks

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Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song.

Here from the desart down the rumbling steep

First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po

In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves

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A mighty flood to water half the East;
And there, in Gothic solitude reclin'd,

The cheerless Tanais pours his hoary urn.

364

What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades
Enwrap these infant floods! Thro' 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 extra vagant 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 whether leads,
To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain,
That subterrane us way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread

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This trembling ground. The task remains to sing.

Your gifts (so Pæan, so the powers of health

Command) to praise your crystal element:

380

The chief ingredient in heaven's various works;
Whose flexible 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 vigour fills your 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' alternative fits of feverish mirth,
And sick dejection, Still serene and pleas'd,
They knew no pains but what the tender soul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget.
Blest with divine immunity from ails,

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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,

400

How would they scorn 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 sloth begot disease.

Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain

The choice of water.

Thus the Coan * sage

406

Opin'd and thus the learn'd of every 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;

410

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,
O'er rocks resounding, or for many a mile

415

Hurl'd down the pebbly channel, wholesome yields

And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Though thirst, we ne'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 powers of fire

4.20

425

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, indolently given,
Toys with its duty, animate with wine
Th' insipid stream; the 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;

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Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw'd

Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years

Embalm'din fiery quintescence of wine,

441

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.

445

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

450

Of grosser crudity convey, pervades
The far-remote meanders of our frame.
Ah! sly dece'ver! Branded o'er and o'er,
Yet still believ'd! Exulting o'er the wreck
Of sober views!-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.

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Mean time, I would not always dread the bowl,

Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife,

460

Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expells,

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

465

To learn to bear, is easier than to shun.

* See Book iy.

Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
Or sacred country calls, with mellowing wine
To moisten well the thirsty suffrages:
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;

470

And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth
The brows of care, indulge your festive vein
In cups by well-inform'd experience found

476

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.

481

Weak withering age no rigid law forbids,

With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm,
The sapless habit daily to bedew,

486

And give 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?

490

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,

495

In youthful bodies more severely felt,

Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life,

And sows the temples with untimely snow.
When life is new, the ductile fibres feel

505

The heart's increasing force; and, day by day,
The growth advances; till the larger tubes,

C

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 mean time, amid the grinding force
Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes;

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515

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, whence life must downward tend.

For still the beating tide consolidates

521

The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still

To the weak throbs of th' ill-supported heart.

This lauguishing, these strength'ning by degrees
To hard unyielding unelastic bone,

525

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

530

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,

535

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.

540

* In the human body, as well as in those of other animals, 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 degenarate into impervious chords or fibres. In proportion as these small vessels become solid, the larger must of course grow 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 consequeni rigidity of the larger one, the progress of the human body, from infancy to old age, is accounted for.