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The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight:
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour

The gun's unerring thunder; and there are

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Whom still the meed* of the green archer charms.
He chooses best, whose labour entertains
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 labours. These assidiously,

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But gently, in their proper arts employ'd,
Acquire a vigour and elastic spring

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

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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 courses play
On bended reins; as yet the skilful youth
Repress their foamy pride; but every breath

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The race grows warmer,' and the tempest swells;
Till all the fiery mettle has its way,

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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.

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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,

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Or the slow minings of the hectic fire.

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

†The inflammation of the lungs.

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

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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

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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 dusky 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 court 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
Thro' 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.

Where lurk the shelves, and where the whirlpools boil,

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He knows enough, the mariner, who knows

What signs portend the storm: to subtler minds
He leaves to scan, from what mysterious cause
Charybdis rages in th' Ionian wave;

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Whence neither oar nor sail can stem; and why

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

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In antient times, when Rome with Athens vied

For polish'd luxury and useful arts;

All hot and reeking from the Olympic strife,

And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath
Th' athletic youth relax'd their weary limbs.

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Soft oils bedew'd them, with the grateful pow'rs
Of Nard and Cassia fraught, to sooth 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 thro' the small arterial mouths, that pierce In endless millions the close-woven skin,

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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

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With ease and pleasure move; but this restrain'd
Or more or less, so more or less you feel

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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.

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Subject not then by soft emollient arts

This grand expence, on which your fates depend,

To every caprice of the sky; nor thwart

The genius of your clime: for from the blood

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Least fickle rise the recremental steams,

And least obnoxious to the styptic air,

Which breathe thro' straiter and more callous pores.
The temper'd Scythian hence, half naked treads

His boundless snows, nor rues th' inclement heaven;

And hence our painted ancestors defied

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The East: nor curs'd, like us, their fickle sky.

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,

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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

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Essential to his health, should never mix
With human kind, nor art nor trade pursue.
He not the safe vicissitude 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)

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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.

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Let those who from the frozen Arctos reach
Parch'd Mauritania, or the sultry West,
Or the wide flood through rich Indostan roll'd,
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 shall 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.

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Still to be pure, even did it not conduce

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(As much it does) to health, were greatly worth

Your daily pains. 'Tis this adorns the rich;

T'he 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,

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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.

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But now the hours and seasons when to toil From foreign themes recall 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.

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But from the recent meal no labours please,

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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.

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While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins,

No labours are too hard: by those you 'scape

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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 inhuman pains

May all be free who merit not the wheel:

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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

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Explore their flight; me, near the cool cascade
Reclin'd or sauntring 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.

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