“ 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. ”

“ Nor less the warmer living tribes demand
The fost'ring fun: whose energy divine
340Dwells not in mortal fire; whose generous heat
Glows thro' the mass of grosser elements,
And kindles into life the pond'rous spheres.
Chear'd by thy kind invigorating warmth,
We court thy beams, great majesty of day!
345If not the soul, the regent of this world,
First born of heaven, and only less than God!
↑ Hygeia the goddess of health, was, according to the genealogy of the heathen deities, the daughter of Esculapius; who, as well as Apollo, was distinguished by the name of Pæon. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”