Th'empires of heat and cold; by neither claim'd,
Influenc'd by both; a middle regimen
Impofe. Thro' autumn's languifling domain
Defcending, nature by degrees invites
To glowing luxury. But from the depth
Of winter when th' invigorating year
Emerges; when Favonius, fluth'd with love,
Toyful and young, in ev'ry breeze defcends
More warm and wanton on his kindling bride;
Then, fhepherds, then begin to fpare your flocks;
And learn, with wife humanity, to check
The luft of blood. Now pregnant earth commits
A various offspring to th' indulgent fky:
Now bounteous nature feeds with lavifh hand
The prone creation; yields what once fuffic'd.
Their dainty fov'reign, when the world was young
Ere yet the barb'rous thirst of blood had feiz'd
The human breaft. Each rolling month matures
The food that fuits it most ; so does each clime.

Far in the horrid realms of Winter, where
Th'eftablifh'd ocean heaps a monftrous waste
Of fhining rocks and mountains to the pole,
There lives a hardy race, whofe plainelt wants
Relentless earth, their cruel ftep-mother,
Regards not. On the wafte of iron fields,
Untam'd, intractable, no harvefls wave;
Pomona hates them, and the clownish god
Who tends the garden. In this frozen world
Such cooling gifts were vain: a fitter meal
Is earn'd with eafe; for here the fruitful spawn
Of Ocean fwarms, and heaps their genial board
With gen'rous fare and luxury profufe.

Thefe are their bread, the only bread they know ;
Thefe, and their willing flave, the deer, that crops,
The fhrubby herbage on their meagre hills.
Girt by the burning Zone, not thus the South
Her fwarthy fons in either Ind maintains:
Or thirty Lybia, from whofe fervid loins

The

The lion bursts, and ev'ry fiend that roams
Th'affrighted wildernefs. The mountain herd,
Aduft and dry, no fweet repaft affords ;'
Nor does the epid main fuch kinds produce,
So perfect, fo delicious, as the fhoals
Oficy Zembla. Rafhly where the blood
Brews feverifh frays; where scarce the tubes fuflain
Its tumid fervour and tempefluous courfe,
Kind Nature tempts not to fuch gifts as these.
But here in livid ripenefs melts the grape ;
Here, finifh'd by invigorating funs,
Thro' the green hade the golden orange glows;
Spontaneous here, the turgid melon yields
A gen'rous pulp; the coco fwells on high
With milky riches; and in horrid mail
The crifp ananas wraps its poignant fweets:
Earth'd vaunted progeny; in ruder air
Too coy to flourish, ev'n too proud to live,
Or hardly rais'd by artificial fire

To vapid life. Here, with a mother's fmile,
Glad Amalthea pours a copious horn:

Here buxom Ceres reigns: th'autumnal fea
In boundless billows fluctuates o'er their plains.
What fuits the climate beft, what fuits the men,
Nature profufes moft, and moft the tafle
Demands. The fountain edg'd with racy wine
Or acid fruit, będews their thirsty fouls.
The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs
Supports in elfe intolerable air;

While the cool palm, the plaintain, and the grove
That waves on gloomy Lebanon, affuage

The torrid hell that beams upon their heads.

Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead;
Now let me wander thro' your gelid reign.
I burn to view th'enthufiaftic wilds
By mortal elfe untrod. I hear the din
Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs,
With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks

Whence

Whence glide the freams renown'd in ancient fongs
Here from the defart down the rumbling steep
Firft fprings the Nile; here burfts the founding Po
In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves
A mighty, flood to water half the east;
And there, in Gothic folitude reclin'd,
The cheerlefs Tanais pours his hoary urn,
What folemn twilight, what ftupendous fhades,
Enwrap thefe infant floods! Thro' ev'ry nerve
A facred horror thrills, a pleafing fear

Glides o'er my frame. The foreft deepens round;
And, more gigantic fill, th'impending trees
Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom,
Are thefe the confines of fome fairy world.
A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds
What unknown nations, if indeed beyond
Aught habitable lies? And whither leads,
To what ftrange regions, or of blifs or pain,
That fubteranneous way? Propitious maids,
Conduct me, while with fearful fteps I tread
This trembling ground. The tafk remains to fing
Your gifts (fo Pæon, fo the pow'rs of health
Command), to praife your cryftal element ;.
The chief ingredient in Heaven's various works;
Whofe flexile genius fparkles in the gem,
Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine;
The vehicle, the fource, of nutriment
And life to all that vegetate or live.

O comfortable ftreams! With eager lips,
And trembling hand, the languid thirsty quaff
New life in you: frefh vigour fills their veins.
warmer cups the rural ages knew ;

No

None warmer fought the fires of human kind
Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days
Felt not th' alternate hits of fev'rifh mirth
And fick dejection. Still ferene and pleas'd,
They knew no pains but what the tender foul
With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget.

Ble

C

Bleft with divine immunity from ails,
Long centuries they liv'd; their only fate
Was ripe old age, and rather fleep than death.
Oh! could thofe worthies from the world of gods
Return to vifit their degen'rate fons,

F

How would they feorn the joys of modern time.
With all our art and toil improv'd to pain! 1.
Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury,
And luxury on lloth begot difeafe.

Learn temp'rance, friends; and hear without difdau
The choice of water. Thus the * Coan fage
Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of ev'ry fchool:
What leaft of foreign principles partakes

Is beft; the lightest then; what bears the touch
Of fire the leaft, and fooneft mounts in air;
The moft infipid, the most void of smell.
Such the rude mountain from its horrid fides
Pours down; fuch waters in the fandy vale
For ever boil, alike of winter frofts

And fummer's heat fecure. The crystal stream.
Through rocks refounding, or for many a mile
O'er the chaf'd pebbles hurl'd, yields whole fome, pure
And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws,
And half the mountains melt into the tide.
Tho' thirst were ne'er fo refolute, avoid
The fordid lake, and all fuch drowsy floods
As fill from Lethe Belgia's flow canals
With reft corrupt, with vegetation green;
Squalid with generation, and the birth
Of little monfters), till the pow'r of fire
Has from profane embraces difengag'd
The violated lymph. The virgin fiream,
In boiling, waftes its finer foul in air.

Nothing like fimple element dilutes
The food, or gives the chyle fo foon to flow.
But where the ftomach, indolently given,
Toys with its duty, animate with wine

* Hippocrates.

Th

Th'infipid ftream: tho' golden Ceres yields

A more voluptuous, a more fprightly draught; 77 Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all

The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyfs

Of fermentation fpring; with fpirit fraught,E And furious with intoxicating fire;

Retard concoction, and preferve unthaw'd

T

Th' embodied mafs. You fee what countless years, I
Embalm'd in fiery quinteffence of wine.
The puny wonders of the reptile world,
The tender rudiments of life, the flim
Unravellings of minute anatomy,ran

Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain. math10

We curfe not wine; the vile excefs we blame,
More fruitful than th' accumulated board
Of pain and mifery. For the fubtle draught
Fafter and furer fwells the vital tide;
And with more active poison, than the floods
Of groffer crudity convey, pervades
The far remote meanders of our frame.
Ah, fly deceiver! branded o'er and o'er,
Yet ftill believ'd! exulting o'er the wreck
Of fober vows! But the Parnaffian Maids
Another time, perhaps, fhall fing the joys,
The fatal charms, the many woes, of wine;
Perhaps its various tribes and various pow'rs.

Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl,
Nor ev'ry trespass fhun. The fev'rifh ftrife,
Raus'd by the rare debauch, fubdues, expels
The loit'ring crudities that burthen life;
And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears
Th' obftructed tubes. Befides, this reftlefs world
Is full of chances, which by habit's pow'r
To learn to bear, is eafier than to fhun.
Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold,
Or facred country calls, with mellowing wine.
To moiften well the thirty fuffrages;

*See Book IV.

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