Diet

ENough of air. A desart subject now, Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight. A barren waste, where not a garland grows To bind the muse's brow; not even a proud Stupendous solitude frowns o'er the heath, To rouse a noble horror in the soul: But rugged paths fatigue, and error leads Thro' endless labyrinths the devious feet. Farewel, etherial fields! the humbler arts Of life; the table and the homely Gods, Demand my song. Elysian gales adieu!

The blood, the fountain whence the spirits flow. The generous stream that waters every part, And motion, vigor, and warm life conveys To every particle that moves or lives; This vital fluid, thro' unnumber'd tubes Pour'd by the heart, and to the heart again Refunded; scourg'd for ever round and round, Enrag'd with heat and toil, at last forgets Its balmy nature; virulent and thin It grows; and now, but that a thousand gates Are open to its flight, it would destroy The parts it cherish'd and repair'd before. Besides, the flexible and tender tubes Melt in the mildest, most nectareous tide That ripening nature rolls; as in the stream Its crumbling banks; but what the vital force Of plastic fluids hourly batters down, That very force, those plastic particles Rebuild: So mutable the state of man. For this the watchful appetite was giv'n, Daily with fresh materials to repair This unavoidable expence of life, This necessary waste of flesh and blood. Hence the concoctive powers, with various art, Subdue the cruder aliments to chyle; The chyle to blood; the foamy purple tide To liquors, which thro' finer arteries To different parts their winding course pursue; To try new changes, and new forms put on, Or for the public, or some private use. Nothing so foreign but th' athletic hind Can labour into blood. The hungry meal Alone he fears, or aliments too thin, By violent powers too easily subdu'd, Too soon expell'd. His daily labour thaws, To friendly chyle, the most rebellious mass That salt can harden, or the smoke of years; Nor does his gorge the rancid bacon rue, Nor that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste Of solid milk. But ye of softer clay Infirm and delicate! and ye who waste With pale and bloated sloth the tedious day! Avoid the stubborn aliment, avoid The full repast; and let sagacious age Grow wiser, lesson'd by the dropping teeth.

Half subtiliz'd to chyle, the liquid food Readiest obeys th' assimilating powers; And soon the tender vegetable mass Relents; and soon the young of those that tread The stedfast earth, or cleave the green abyss, Or pathless sky. And if the Steer must fall, In youth and vigor glorious let him die; Nor stay till rigid age, or heavy ails, Absolve him ill-requited from the yoke. Some with high forage, and luxuriant ease, Indulge the veteran Ox; but wiser thou, From the bleak mountain or the barren downs, Expect the flocks by frugal nature fed; A race of purer blood, with exercise Refin'd and scanty fare: For, old or young, The stall'd are never healthy; nor the cramm'd. Not all the culinary arts can tame, To wholsome food, th' abominable growth Of rest and gluttony; the prudent taste Rejects like bane such loathsome lusciousness. The languid stomach curses even the pure Delicious fat, and all the race of oil; For more the oily aliments relax Its feeble tone; and with the eager lymph (Fond to incorporate with all it meets) Coily they mix; and shun with slippery wiles The wooed embrace. Th' irresoluble oil, So gentle late and blandishing, in floods Of rancid bile o'erflows: What tumults hence, What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate. Chuse leaner viands, ye of jovial make! Chuse sober meals; and rouse to active life Your cumbrous clay; nor on th' enfeebling down, Irresolute, protract the morning hours. But let the man, whose bones are thinly clad, With chearful ease, and succulent repast Improve his slender habit. Each extreme From the blest mean of sanity departs. I could relate what table this demands, Or that complexion; what the various powers Of various foods: But fifty years would roll, And fifty more, before the tale were done. Besides, there often lurks some nameless, strange, Peculiar thing; nor on the skin display'd, Felt in the pulse, nor in the habit seen; Which finds a poison in the food that most The temp'rature affects. There are, whose blood Impetuous rages thro' the turgid veins, Who better bear the fiery fruits of Ind, Than the moist Melon, or pale Cucumber. Of chilly nature others fly the board Supply'd with slaughter, and the vernal pow'rs For cooler, kinder, sustenance implore. Some even the generous nutriment detest Which, in the shell, the sleeping Embyro rears. Some, more unhappy still, repent the gifts Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign: The balmy quintescence of every flower, And every grateful herb that decks the spring; The soft'ring dew of tender sprouting life; The best reflection of declining age; The kind restorative of those who lie Half-dead and panting, from the doubtful strife Of nature struggling in the grasp of death. Try all the bounties of this fertile globe, There is not such a salutary food, As suits with every stomach. But (except, Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl, And boil'd and bak'd, you hesitate by which You sunk oppress'd, or whether not by all;) Taught by experience soon you may discern What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates That lull the sicken'd appetite too long; Or heave with feverish flushings all the face, Burn in the palms, and parch the roughning tongue; Or much diminish or too much increase Th' expence which nature's wise oeconomy, Without or waste or avarice, maintains. Such cates abjur'd, let prouling hunger loose, And bid the curious palate roam at will; They scarce can err amid the various stores That burst the teeming entrails of the world.

Led by sagacious taste, the ruthless king Of 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 The 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. Directed, bounded, by this pow'r within, Their cravings are well-aim'd: Voluptous man Is by superior faculties misled; Misled from pleasure even in quest of joy. Sated with nature's boons, what thousands seek, With dishes tortur'd from their native taste, And mad variety, to spur beyond Its wiser will the jaded appetite! Is this for pleasure? Learn a juster taste; And know, that temperance is true luxury. Or is it pride? Pursue some nobler aim. Dismiss your parasites, who praise for hire; And earn the fair esteem of honest men, Whose praise is fame. Form'd of such clay as yours, The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates. Even modest want may bless your hand unseen, Tho' hush'd in patient wretchedness at home. Is there no virgin, grac'd with every charm But that which binds the mercenary vow? No youth of genius, whose neglected bloom Unfoster'd sickens in the barren shade.? No worthy man, by fortune's random blows, Or by a heart too generous and humane, Constrain'd to leave his happy natal seat, And sigh for wants more bitter than his own? There are, while human miseries abound, A thousand ways to waste superfluous wealth, Without one fool or flatterer at your board, Without one hour of sickness or disgust.

But other ills th' ambiguous feast pursue, Besides provoking the lascivious taste. Such various foods, tho' harmless each alone, Each other violate; and oft we see What strife is brew'd, and what pernicious bane, From combinations of innoxious things. Th' unbounded taste I mean not to confine To hermit's diet, needlessly severe. But would you long the sweets of health enjoy, Or husband pleasure; at one impious meal Exhaust not half the bounties of the year, And of each realm. It matters not mean while How much to morrow differ from to day; So far indulge: 'tis fit, besides, that man, To change obnoxious, be to change inur'd. But stay the curious appetite, and taste With caution fruits you never tried before. For want of use the kindest aliment Sometimes offends, while custom tames the rage Of poison to mild amity with life. So heav'n has form'd us to the general taste Of all its gifts; so custom has improv'd This bent of nature; that few simple foods, Of all that earth, or air, or ocean yield, But by excess offend. Beyond the sense Of light refection, at the genial board Indulge not often; nor protract the feast To dull satiety; till soft and slow A drowzy death creeps on, th' expansive soul Oppress'd, and smother'd the celestial fire. The stomach, urg'd beyond its active tone, Hardly to nutrimental chyle subdues The softest food: unfinish'd and deprav'd, The chyle, in all its future wand'rings, owns Its turbid fountain; not by purer streams So to be clear'd, but foulness will remain. To sparkling wine what ferment can exalt Th' unripen'd grape? Or what mechanic skill From the crude ore can spin the ductile gold? 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-labour'd blood; But to unlock the elemental tubes, Collaps'd 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 ravish'd from the foil, Thro' wither'd veins imbibe the vernal dew. 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 th' exhausted veins absorb The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers Oft to th' 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 toss'd and famish'd on the wintry main; The war shook off, or hospitable shore Attain'd, with temperance bear the shock of joy; Nor crown with festive rites th' 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 ev'n of that: a little give At first; that kindled, add a little more; Till, by deliberate nourishing, the flame Reviv'd, with all its wonted vigor glows.

But tho' 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 lours; 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 labour. But the day return'd Of festal luxury, the wise indulge Most in the tender vegetable breed: Then chiefly when the summer's beams inflame The brazen heavens; or angry Syrius sheds A feverish taint thro' the still gulph of air. The moist cool viands then, and flowing cup From the fresh dairy-virgin's liberal hand, Will save your head from harm, tho' round the world The dreaded Causos roll his wasteful fires. 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 Th' empires of heat and cold; by neither claim'd, Influenc'd by both; a middle regimen Impose. Thro' autumn's languishing domain Descending, nature by degrees invites To glowing luxury. But from the depth Of winter, when th' invigorated year Emerges; when Favonius flush'd 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 th' indulgent sky: Now bounteous nature feeds with lavish hand The prone creation; yields what once suffic'd Their dainty sovereign, when the world was young; E're yet the barbarous thirst of blood had seiz'd The human breast. Each rolling month matures The food that suits it most; so does each clime. Far in the horrid realms of winter, where Th' establish'd 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, Untam'd, untractable, 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 earn'd 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 shrubby herbage on their meager hills. Girt by the burning zone, not thus the south Her swarthy sons, in either Ind, maintains: Or thirsty Lybia; from whose fervid loins The lion bursts, and every fiend that roams Th' affrighted wilderness. The mountain herd, Adust and dry, no sweet repast affords; Nor does the tepid main such kinds produce, So perfect, so delicious, as the stores Of icy Zembla. Rashly where the blood Brews feverish frays; where scarce the tubes sustain Its tumid fervor and tempestuous course; Kind nature tempts not to such gifts as these. But here in livid ripeness melts the grape; Here, finish'd by invigorating suns, Thro' the green shade the golden Orange glows Spontaneous here the turgid Melon yields A generous pulp; the Coco swells on high With milky riches; and in horrid mail The soft Ananas wraps its tender sweets. Earth's vaunted progeny: In ruder air Too coy to flourish, even to proud to live; Or hardly rais'd by artificial fire To vapid life. Here with a mother's smile Glad Amalthea pours her copious horn. Here buxom Ceres reigns: Th' autumnal sea In boundless billows fluctuates o'er their plains. What suits the climate best, what suits the men, Nature profuses most, and most the taste Demands. The fountain, edg'd with racy wine Or acid fruit, bedews their thirsty souls. The breeze eternal breathing round their limbs Supports in else intolerable air: While the cool Palm, the Plantain, and the grove That waves on gloomy Lebanon, assuage 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' enthusiastic wilds By coital else untrod. I hear the din Of waters thundering o'er the ruin'd cliffs. With holy rev'rence I approach the rocks Whence glide the streams renown'd in ancient song. Here from the desart down the rumbling steep First springs the Nile; here bursts the sounding Po In angry waves; Euphrates hence devolves A mighty flood to water half the East; And there, in Gothic solitude reclin'd, The chearless Tanais pours his hoary urn. What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades Enwarp these infant floods! Thro' every nerve A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round; And more gigantic still th' impending trees Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. 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 chrystal 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 vegitate or live. 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 fought the fires of human-kind. Happy in temperate peace! Their equal days Felt not th' alternate fits of feverish mirth, And sick dejection. Still serene and pleas'd, 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 liv'd; their only fate Was ripe old age, and rather sleep than death. Oh! 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 improv'd to pain! Too happy they! But wealth brought luxury, And luxury on sloth begot disease.

Learn temperance, friends; and hear without disdain The choice of water. Thus the Coan sage Opin'd, and thus the learn'd of every school. What least of foreign principles partakes Is best: The lightest then; what bears the touch Of fire the least, and soonest mounts in air; The most insipid; the most void of smell. Such the rude mountain from his horrid sides Pours down; such waters in the sandy vale For ever boil, alike of winter frosts And summer's heat secure. The lucid stream, O'er rocks resounding, or for many a mile Hurl'd down the pebbly channel, wholesome yields And mellow draughts; except when winter thaws, And half the mountains melt into the tide. Tho' third were ne'er so resolute, avoid The sordid lake, and all such drowsy floods As fill from Lethe Belgia's slow canals; (With rest corrupt, with vegetation green; Squalid with generation, and the birth Of little monsters;) till the power of fire Has from profane embraces disengag'd The violated lymph. The virgin stream In boiling wastes its finer soul in air.

Nothing like simple element dilutes The food, or gives the chyle so soon to flow. But where the stomach, indolently given, Toys with its duty, animate with wine Th' insipid stream: Tho' golden Ceres yields A more voluptuous, a more sprightly draught; Perhaps more active. Wine unmix'd, and all The gluey floods that from the vex'd abyss Of fermentation spring; with spirit fraught, And furious with intoxicating fire; Retard concoction, and preserve unthaw'd Th' embodied mass. You see what countless years, Embalm'd in fiery quintescence of wine, The puny wonders of the reptile world, The tender rudiments of life, the slim Unrav'lings of minute anatomy, Maintain their texture, and unchang'd remain!

We curse not wine: The vile excess we blame; More fruitful, than th' accumulated board, 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! fly deceiver! Branded o'er and o'er, Yet still believ'd! 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.

Meantime, I would not always dread the bowl, Nor every trespass shun. 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 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, unseason'd to the midnight frays Of Comus and his rout, wilt thou contend With Centaurs long to hardy deeds inur'd? 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-inform'd 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.

Oh! seldom may the fated hours return Of drinking deep! I would not daily taste, Except when life declines, even sober cups. Weak withering age no rigid law forbids, With frugal nectar, smooth and slow with balm, The sapless habit daily to bedew, And give the hesitating wheels of life Gliblier to play. But youth has better joys; And is it wise when youth with pleasure flows, To squander the reliefs of age and pain?

What dext'rous thousands just within the goal Of wild debauch direct their nightly course! Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days, No morning admonitions shock the head. But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace, And that incurable disease old age, In youthful bodies more severely felt, More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime; Except kind nature by some hasty blow Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate'er Beyond its natural fervor hurries on The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, High-season'd fare, or exercise to toil Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir'd life, And sows the temples with untimely snow. When life is new, the ductile fibres feel The heart's increasing force; and, day by day, The growth advances; till the larger tubes, Acquiring (from their elemental veins, Condens'd to solid chords) a firmer tone, Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood. Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse And pressure, still the great destroy the small; Still with the ruins of the small grow strong. Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes; 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, By 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 To hard unyielding unelastic bone, Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on; It loiters still: And now it stirs no more. This is the period few attain; the death Of nature: Thus (so heav'n ordain'd it) life Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang'd, Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate; And Homer live immortal as his song.

What does not fade? The tower that long had stood The crush of thunder, and the warring winds, Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base. And flinty pyramids, and walls of brass, Descend; the Babylonian spires are sunk; Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down. Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight. This huge rotundity we tread grows old; And all those worlds that roll around, the sun, The sun himself, shall die; and ancient Night Again involve the desolate abyss: Till the great Father thro' the lifeless gloom Extend his arm to light another world, And bid new planets roll by other laws. For 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. New worlds are still emerging from the deep; The old descending, in their turns to rise.