For want of use the kindest aliment EXCESS TO BE AVOIDED, AND EVEN SATIETY. So Heaven has formed us to the general taste A drowsy death creeps on, the expansive soul RIOTING AND ASCETICISM EQUALLY TO BE SHUNned. Gross riot treasures up a wealthy fund Of plagues; but more immedicable ills Attend the lean extreme. For physic knows How to disburden the too tumid veins, Even how to ripen the half-labored blood: But to unlock the elemental tubes, Collapsed and shrunk with long inanity, And with balsamic nutriment repair The dried and worn-out habit, were to bid Old age grow green, and wear a second spring ; Or the tall ash, long ravished from the soil, Through withered veins imbibe the vernal dew. THE FIRST CALLS OF HUNGER TO BE OBEYED.-FEAST MODERATELY AFTER FAMINE. When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain: For the keen appetite will feast beyond What nature well can bear; and one extreme Ne'er without danger meets its own reverse. Too greedily the exhausted veins absorb The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers, Oft to the extinction of the vital flame. To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege, And famine, humbled, may this verse be borne ; And hear, ye hardiest sons that Albion breeds, Long tossed and famished on the wintry main ; The war shook off, or hospitable shore Attained, with temperance bear the shock of joy; Nor crown with festive rites the auspicious day; Such feast might prove more fatal than the waves, Than war, or famine. While the vital fire Burns feebly, heap not the green fuel on; But prudently foment the wandering spark With what the soonest feels its kindred touch: Be frugal even of that; a little give CHANGE GRADUALLY. ABSTAIN WHEN NATURE HINTS. But though the two (the full and the jejune) Extremes have each their vice; it much avails Ever with gentle tide to ebb and flow From this to that: so nature learns to bear Whatever chance or headlong appetite May bring. Besides, a meagre day subdues The cruder clods by sloth or luxury Collected, and unloads the wheels of life. Sometimes a coy aversion to the feast Comes on, while yet no blacker omen lowers ; Then is a time to shun the tempting board, Were it your natal or your nuptial day. Perhaps a fast so seasonable starves The latent seeds of woe, which, rooted once, Might cost you labor. WHEN TO INDULGE IN SUCCULENT VEGETABLES. But the day returned Of festal luxury, the wise indulge WINTER NEEDS A GENEROUS, WARMER FARE; DIET IN AUTUMN, ETC. AVOID MUCH MEAT IN SPRING. Pale humid Winter loves the generous board, The meal more copious, and a warmer fare ; And longs with old wood and old wine to cheer His quaking heart. The seasons which divide The empires of heat and cold; by neither claimed, Influenced by both, a middle regimen Impose. Through autumn's languishing domain Descending, nature by degrees invites To glowing luxury. But, from the depth Of Winter when the invigorated year Emerges; when Favonius, flushed with love, Toyful and young, in every breeze descends More warm and wanton on his kindling bride; Then, shepherds, then begin to spare your flocks; And learn, with wise humanity, to check The lust of blood. Now pregnant earth commits A various offspring to the indulgent sky; Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand The prone creation; yields what once sufficed Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young; Ere yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seized The human breast. Each rolling month matures The food that suits it most; so does each clime. 1 The burning fever. DEER-FLESH; FISH AND OIL THE ONLY FOOD OF THE ARCTICS. -NO VEGETABLES. Far in the horrid realms of winter, where The established ocean heaps a monstrous waste Of shining rocks and mountains to the pole ; There lives a hardy race, whose plainest wants Relentless earth, their cruel step-mother, Regards not. On the waste of iron fields, Untamed, intractable, no harvests 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 earned with ease; for here the fruitful spawn Of Ocean swarms, and heaps their genial board With generous fare, and luxury profuse. These are their bread, the only bread they know ; These, and their willing slave the deer, that crops The scrubby herbage on their meagre hills, Or scales, for fattening moss, the savage rocks. THE TORRID ZONE SUPPLIES ITS SONS WITH VEGETABLES Girt by the burning zone, not thus the south Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain Through the green shade the golden orange glows; To vapid life. Here with a mother's smile While the cool palm, the plantain, and the grove DON. Now come, ye Naiads, to the fountains lead; Now let me wander through your gelid reign: A mighty flood to water half the East; PRAISES OF WATER. 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 whither leads, To what strange regions, or of bliss or pain, That subterraneous way? Propitious Maids, Conduct me, while with fearful steps I tread This trembling ground. The task remains to sing Your gifts (so Pæon, so the powers of health Command), to praise your crystal element, The chief ingredient in heaven's various works; Whose flexile 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. COLD WATER THE BEST OF DRINKS. THE GOLDEN AGE. 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 ; None warmer sought the sires of human kind. Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days Felt not the alternate fits of feverish mirth And sick dejection. Still serene and pleased, They knew no pains but what the tender soul With pleasure yields to, and would ne'er forget. Blest with divine immunity from ails, Long centuries they lived; their only fate Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death. O! could those worthies from the world of gods Return to visit their degenerate sons, How would they scorn the joys of modern time With all our art and toil improved to pain! Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury, And luxury on sloth begot disease. REASONS OF HIPPOCRATES IN FAVOR OF WATER BEVERAGE. Opined, and thus the learned of every school. And summer's heat secure. The crystal stream, And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws, AVOID DRINKING STAGNANT WATERS TILL BOILED. Though thirst we e'er so resolute, avoid USE OF WINE AND FERMENTED DRINKS. Nothing like simple element dilutes The embodied mass. You see what countless years The puny wonders of the reptile world, Maintain their texture, and unchanged remain. INTEMPERANCE AND ITS CURSES. We curse not wine the vile excess we blame ; More fruitful than the accumulated hoard Of pain and misery. For the subtle draught Faster and surer swells the vital tide; And with more active poison than the floods Of grosser crudity convey pervades The far-remote meanders of our frame. Ah! sly deceiver! branded o'er and o'er, Yet still believed! exulting o'er the wreck Of sober vows! - 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. 1 See Armstrong's 'Art of Health,' 'The Passions,' under 'January' HOW, WHEN, AND WHERE, TO INDULGE IN WINE. Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl, Nor every trespass shun. The feverish strife, Roused by the rare debauch, subdues, expels, The loitering crudities that burden life; And, like a torrent full and rapid, clears The obstructed tubes. Besides, this restless world Is full of chances, which by habit's power To learn to bear is easier than to shun. Ah! when ambition, meagre love of gold, Or sacred country, calls, with mellowing wine To moisten well the thirsty suffrages: Say how, unseasoned to the midnight frays Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inured? Then learn to revel; but by slow degrees: By slow degrees the liberal arts are won; And Hercules grew strong. But when you smooth The brows of care, indulge your festive vein In cups by well-informed experience found 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. DAILY DRAMMING' CONDEMNED. CORDIALS FOR AGE. O seldom may the fated hours return EXCESS IN WINE, OR FOOD, OR WORK, INJURIOUS. — PREMA- What dextrous thousands just within the goal In youthful bodies more severely felt, The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, GRADUAL PROGRESS FROM YOUTH TO AGE. — THE FIBRES 1 In the human body, as well as in the bodies of other animals, the larger blood-vessels are composed of smaller ones; Condensed to solid chords) a firmer tone, which, by the violent motion and pressure of the fluids in the large vessels, lose their cavities by degrees, and degenerate 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 consequent rigidity of the larger ones, the progress of the human body, from infancy to old age, is accounted for. Destroys itself; and could these laws have changed, AS DOES MAN, 80 DO HIS WORKS, GRADUALLY TEND TO What does not fade? The tower that long had Till the great Father through the lifeless gloom Tusser's "July's Husbandry." Go muster thy servants, be captain thyself, Not rent off, but cut off, ripe bean with a knife, 1 Assure yourself. 2 Patch unploughed. 3 Buckwheat. Rural Odes for July. BRYANT'S "AFTER A TEMPEST.” Where the vast plain lay girt by mountains vast, Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred, Save when a shower of diamonds to the ground Was shaken by the flight of startled bird; For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard About the flowers; the cheerful rivulet sung And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward; To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung, And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung. And from beneath the leaves that kept them dry Flew many a glittering insect here and there, And darted up and down the butterfly, That seemed a living blossom of the air. The flocks came scattering from the thicket, where The violent rain had pent them, in the way Strolled groups of damsels frolicsome and fair, The farmer swung the scythe or turned the hay, And 'twixt the heavy swaths his children were at play. It was a scene of peace—and, like a spell, And beauteous scene; while, far beyond them all, On many a lovely valley, out of sight, Was poured from the blue heavens the same soft golden light. I looked, and thought the quiet of the scene No more shall beg their lives on bended knee, done. ROGERS'S "RURAL RETREAT.” A bee-hive's hum shall soothe my ear; And share my meal, a welcome guest. Where first our marriage vows were given, With merry peals shall swell the breeze, And point with taper spire to heaven. LONGFELLOW'S "ANGLER'S SONG." FROM the river's plashy bank, Where the sedge grows green and rank, And the twisted woodbine springs, Upward speeds the morning lark On the dim and misty lakes And the eagle 's on his cloud :- And the rustling reeds pipe loud. Where the embracing ivy holds Close the hoar elm in its folds, In the meadow's fenny land, And the winding river sweeps Through its shallows and still deeps,— Silent with my rod I stand. |