John Armstrong

“ That burst the teeming entrails of the world.
Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king
140Of beasts on blood and slaughter only lives:
The tyger, form'd alike to cruel meals,
Would at the manger starve: Of milder seeds,
The generous horse to herbage and to grain
Confines his wish; tho' fabling Greece resound
145The Thracian steeds with human carnage wild.
Prompted by instinct's never-erring power,
Each creature knows its proper aliment;
But man, th' inhabitant of every clime,
With all the commoners of nature feeds. ”

“ Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you,
500Skill'd to correct the vices of the sky,
And taught already how to each extream
To bend your life. But should the public bane
Infect you, or some trespass of your own,
Or flaw of nature hint mortality:
505Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides
Along the spine, thro' all your torpid limbs;
When first the head throbs, or the stomach feels
A sickly load, a weary pain the loins;
Be Celsus call'd: The fates come rushing on ”

“ For while from feverish and tumultuous joys
380The nerves grow languid and the soul subsides;
The tender Fancy smarts with every sting;
And what was Love before is Madness now.
Is health your care, or luxury your aim,
Be temperate still: When Nature bids obey;
385Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb.
But when the prurient habit of delight,
Or loose Imagination, spurs you on
To deeds above your strength, impute it not
To Nature: Nature all compulsion hates.
390Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown
Urge you to feats you well might sleep without ”

“ You toil to learn; or try the dusty chace,
Or the warm deeds of some important day:
Hot from the field, indulge not yet your limbs
220In 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.
225Why 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. ”

“ And weild the thunder of Demosthenes.
75The chest so exercis'd improves its strength;
And quick vibrations thro' the bowels drive
The restless blood, which in unactive days
Would loiter else thro' unelastic tubes.
Deem it not trifling while I recommend
80What posture suits: To stand and sit by turns.
As nature prompts, is best. But o'er your leaves
To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts,
And robs the fine machinery of its play.
'Tis the great art of life to manage well
85The restless mind. For ever on pursuit
Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers. ”

“ O comfortable streams! With eager lips
And trembling hand the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you; fresh vigor fills their veins.
No warmer cups the rural ages knew;
390None warmer fought the fires of human-kind. ”

“ And brightens all the ornaments of man.
365 But fruitless, hopeless, disappointed, rack'd
With jealousy, fatigued with hope and fear,
Too serious, or too languishingly fond,
Unnerves the body and unmans the soul.
And some have died for Love; and some run mad ”

“ 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 consequent rigidity of the larger ones, the progress of the human body from infancy to old age is accounted for. ”

“ 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,
530By nature fix'd, whence life must downwards tend.
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still,
To the weak throbbings of th' enfeebled heart.
This languishing, these strengthning by degrees
535To hard unyielding unelastic bone,
Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood
Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on ”

“ Of soul is well compensated in limbs,
205Oft 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.
210Pursued 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 feverish strife,
Rous'd by the rare debauch, subdues, expells
The loitering crudities, that burthen life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Th' obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world
475Is full of chances, which by habit's power
To learn to bear is easier than to shun.
Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold ”

“ Our narrow luxuries would soon be stale.
250Were these exhaustless, Nature would grow sick.
And, cloy'd with pleasure, squeamishly complain
That all was vanity, and life a dream.
Let nature rest: Be busy for yourself,
And for your friend; be busy even in vain
255Rather than teize her fated appetites.
Who never fasts no banquet e'er enjoys;
Who never toils or watches never sleeps. ”

“ There are who think these pastimes scarce humane.
Yet in my mind (and not relentless I)
100His life is pure that wears no fouler stains.
But if thro' genuine tenderness of heart,
Or secret want of relish for the game,
You shun the glories of the chace, nor care
To haunt the peopled stream; the garden yields
105A soft amusement, an humane delight.
To raise th' insipid nature of the ground ”

“ Grow more profane. Whatever shapes of death,
Shook from the hideous chambers of the globe,
Swarm thro' the shuddering air: whatever plagues
Or meagre famine breeds, or with slow wings
20Rise from the putrid watry element,
The damp waste forest, motionless and rank,
That smothers earth and all the breathless winds.
Or the vile carnage of th' inhuman field;
Whatever baneful breathes the rotten south;
25Whatever ills th' extremes or sudden change
Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce ”

“ 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
355You hurried, with ill-seasoned exercise,
A half concocted chyle into the blood.
The body overcharg'd with unctuous phlegm
Much toil demands: The lean elastic less.
While winter chills the blood, and binds the veins,
360No labours are too hard: By those you 'scape
The slow diseases of the torpid year ”

“ By bleeding life, be gently wasted down,
By soft decoction and a mellowing heat,
To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass
You chuse, tormented in the boiling wave;
235That thro' the thirsty channels of the blood
A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow.
The fragrant dairy from its cool recess
Its nectar acid or benign will pour
To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl
240Of keen Sherbet the fickle taste relieve.
For with the viscous blood the simple stream
Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups
Oft dissipate more moisture than they give. ”

“ Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin'd,
Portend disastrous to the vital world;
Thy salutary power averts their rage,
35Averts the general bane: and but for thee
Nature would sicken, nature soon would die. ”

“ Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
560For thro' the regions of unbounded space.
Where unconfin'd omnipotence has room,
Being, in various systems, fluctuates still
Between creation and abhorr'd decay;
It ever did; perhaps and ever will.
565New worlds are still emerging from the deep;
The old descending, in their turns to rise.
↑ The burning fever. ↑ Hippocrates. ↑ In the human body, as well as in those of other animals, the larger blood-vessels are composed of smaller ones ”

“ Virtue and Sense I mean not to disjoin;
265Virtue and Sense are one; and, trust me, he
Who has not virtue is not truly wise.
Virtue (for meer good-nature is a fool)
Is sense and spirit, with humanity:
'Tis sometimes angry, and its frown confounds ”

“ The sounding coveys urge their labouring flight;
Eager amid the rising cloud to pour
165The gun's unerring thunder: And there are
Whom still the [1] meed of the green archer charms.
He chuses best, whose labour entertains
His vacant fancy most: The toil you hate
Fatigues you soon, and scarce improves your limbs. ”

“ Thro' all the yielding pores the melted blood
Gush'd out in smoaky sweats; but nought assuag'd
The torrid heat within, nor aught reliev'd
The stomach's anguish. With incessant toil,
555Desperate 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
560The breath was fetch'd, and with huge lab'rings heav'd.
At last a heavy pain oppress'd the head,
A wild delirium came ”

“ Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake;
150Where many lazy muddy rivers flow:
Nor for the wealth that all the Indies roll
Fix near the marshy margin of the main.
For from the humid soil, and watry reign,
Eternal vapours rise; the spungy air
155For ever weeps; or, turgid with the weight
Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. ”

“ They first invade, the conscious body soon
In sympathetic languishment declines.
These chronic passions, while from real woes
140They rise, and yet without the body's fault
Infest the soul, admit one only cure ”

“ By subtle fluids pour'd thro' subtle tubes
30The natural, vital, functions are perform'd.
By these the stubborn aliments are tam'd;
The toiling heart distributes life and strength;
These the still-crumbling frame rebuild; and these
Are lost in thinking, and dissolve in air. ”

“ Creep on, and thro' the sickning functions steal
So, when the chilling East invades the spring,
The delicate Narcissus pines away
In hectic languor; and a slow disease
440Taints all the family of flowers, condemn'd
To cruel heav'ns. But why, already prone
To fade, should beauty cherish its own bane?
O shame! O pity! nipt with pale Quadrille,
And midnight cares, the bloom of Albion dies!
445By toil subdu'd, the Warrior and the Hind
Sleep fast and deep ”

“ And warm Palestra, in the tepid bath
245Th' athletic youth relax'd their weary'd limbs.
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.
250'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
255Too fast to crowd thro' such precarious ways. ”

“ Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.
310⁠But may no fogs, from lake or fenny plain,
Involve my hill. And wheresoe'er you build;
Whether on sun-burnt Epsom, or the plains
Wash'd by the silent Lee; in Chelsea low,
Or high Blackheath with wintry winds assail'd;
315Dry be your house: but airy more than warm.
Else every breath of ruder wind will strike
Your tender body thro' with rapid pains;
Fierce coughs will teize you, hoarseness bind your voice,
Or moist Gravedo load your aching brows. ”

“ Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales.
170The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay
Their flexible vibrations; or inflam'd,
Their tender ever-moving structure thaws.
Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood
A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide
175That flow as Lethe wanders thro' the veins,
Unactive in the services of life,
Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro'
The secret mazy channels of the brain.
The melancholic fiend, (that worst despair
180Of physic) hence the rust-complexion'd man
Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain ”

“ Shrinks from the cold embrace of watry heavens.
215But neither these, nor all Apollo's arts,
Disarm the dangers of the dropping sky,
Unless with exercise and manly toil
You brace your nerves, and spur the lagging blood.
The fat'ning clime let all the sons of ease
220Avoid; if indolence would wish to live.
Go, yawn and loiter out the long slow year
In fairer skies. If droughty regions parch
The skin and lungs, and bake the thick'ning blood ”

“ Acquire a vigor and elastic spring
To which they were not born. But weaker parts
Abhor fatigue and violent discipline.
180Begin with gentle toils; and, as your nerves
Grow firm, to hardier by just steps aspire. ”

“ There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants
305Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother,
Regards not.⁠On the waste of iron fields,
Untam'd, untractable, no harvests wave:
Pomona hates them, and the clownish God
Who tends the garden. In this frozen world
310Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal
Is earn'd with ease ”

“ Whom falsely-smiling fate has curs'd with means
To dissipate their days in quest of joy.
Our aim is Happiness; 'tis yours, 'tis mine,
He said, 'tis the pursuit of all that live;
240Yet few attain it, if 'twas e'er attain'd. ”