I. Air

Daughter of Pæon, queen of every joy, Hygeia; whose indulgent smile sustains The various race luxuriant nature pours, And on th' immortal essences bestows Immortal youth; auspicious, O descend! Thou, chearful guardian of the rolling year, Whether thou wanton'st on the western gale, Or shak'st the rigid pinions of the north, Diffusest life and vigour thro' the tracts Of air, thro' earth, and ocean's deep domain. When thro' the blue serenity of heav'n Thy power approaches, all the wasteful host Of pain and sickness, squallid and deform'd, Confounded sink into the loathsom gloom, Where in deep Erebus involv'd the fiends 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 Rise 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; Whatever ills th' extremes or sudden change Of cold and hot, or moist and dry produce; They fly thy pure effulgence: they, and all The secret poisons of avenging heaven, And all the pale tribes halting in the train Of vice and heedless pleasure: or if aught The comet's glare amid the burning sky, Mournful eclipse, or planets ill-combin'd, Portend disastrous to the vital world; Thy salutary power averts their rage, Averts the general bane: and but for thee Nature would sicken, nature soon would die.

Without thy chearful active energy No rapture swells the breast, no poet sings, No more the maids of Helicon delight. Come then with me, O Goddess heavenly-gay! Begin the song; and let it sweetly flow, And let it wisely teach thy wholesom laws: "How best the fickle fabric to support "Of mortal man; in healthful body how "A healthful mind the longest to maintain." 'Tis hard, in such a strife of rules, to chuse The best, and those of most extensive use; Harder in clear and animated song Dry philosophic precepts to convey. Yet with thy aid the secret wilds I trace Of nature, and with daring steps proceed Thro' paths the muses never trod before.

Nor should I wander doubtful of my way. Had I the lights of that sagacious mind Which taught to check the pestilential fire, And quel the dreaded Python of the Nile. O Thou belov'd by all the graceful arts, Thou long the fav'rite of the healing powers, Indulge, O Mead! a well-design'd essay, Howe'er imperfect: and permit that I My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme.

YE who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind; Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickning, and the living world Exhal'd, to fully heaven's transparent dome With dim mortality. It is not air That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine, Sated with exhalations rank and fell, The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw Of nature; when from shape and texture she Relapses into fighting elements: It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things. Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath, With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immur'd in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows With sickly rest: and (tho' the lungs abhor To drink the dun fuliginous abyss) Did not the acid vigour of the mine, Roll'd from so many thundring chimneys, tame The putrid salts that overswarm the sky; This caustick venom would perhaps corrode Those tender cells that draw the vital air, In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew'd; Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin, Imbib'd, would poison the balsamic blood, And rouse the heart to every fever's rage. While yet you breathe, away! the rural wilds Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales, The woods, the dreams, and each ambrosial breeze That fans the ever undulating sky; A kindly sky! whose soft'ring power regales Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign. Find then some woodland scene where nature smiles Benign, where all her honest children thrive. To us there wants not many a happy feat; Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice. See where enthron'd in adamantine state, Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits; There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove Fail by the slowly-winding Thames; or where Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats, (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise Rural or gay.) O! from the summer's rage O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides Umbrageous Ham! But if the busy town Attract thee still to toil for power or gold, Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess In Hampstead, courted by the weftern wind; Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood; Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd. Green rise the Kentish hills in chearful air; But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet. For on a rustic throne of dewy turf, With baneful fogs her aching temples bound, Quartana there presides; meagre fiend Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the fens. From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest, With feverish blasts subdues the sick'ning land: Cold tremors come, and mighty love of rest, Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins, And rack the joints, and every torpid limb; Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats O'erflow; a short relief from former ills. Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine; The vigour sinks, the habit melts away; The chearful, pure and animated bloom Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad. And oft the sorceress, in her fated wrath, Resigns them to the furies of her train; The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend Ting'd with her own accumulated gall. In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake; Where 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 For ever weeps; or, turgid with the weight Of waters, pours a sounding deluge down. Skies such as these let every mortal shun Who dreads the dropsy, palsy, or the gout, Tertian, corrosive scurvy, or moist catarrh; Or any other injury that grows From raw-spun fibres idle and unstrung, Skin ill-perspiring, and the purple flood In languid eddies loitering into phlegm. Yet not alone from humid skies we pine; For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven, That winnows into dust the blasted downs, Bare and extended wide without a stream, Too fast imbibes th' attenuated lymph Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales. The 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 That 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 Of physic) hence the rust-complexion'd man Pursues, whose blood is dry, whose fibres gain Too stretch'd a tone: And hence in climes adust So sudden tumults seize the trembling nerves, And burning fevers glow with double rage.

Fly, if you can, these violent extremes Of air; the wholesome is nor moist nor dry. But as the power of chusing is deny'd To half mankind, a further task ensues; How best to mitigate these fell extreams, How breathe unhurt the withering element, Or hazy atmosphere: Tho' custom moulds To every clime the soft Promethean clay; And he who first the fogs of Essex breath'd (So kind is native air) may in the fens Of Essex from inveterate ills revive At pure Montpelier or Bermuda caught. But if the raw and oozy heaven offend, Correct the soil, and dry the sources up Of watry exhalation; wide and deep Conduct your trenches thro' the spouting bog; Solicitous, with all your winding arts, Betray th' unwilling lake into the stream; And weed the forest, and invoke the winds To break the toils where strangled vapours lie; Or thro' the thickets send the crackling flames. Mean time, at home with chearful fires dispel The humid air: And let your table smoke With solid roast or bak'd; or what the herds Of tamer breed supply; or what the wilds Yield to the toilsom pleasures of the chase. Generous your wine, the boast of rip'ning years, But frugal be your cups; the languid frame, Vapid and sunk from yesterday's debauch, Shrinks from the cold embrace of watry heavens. But 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 Avoid; 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; Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat, Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate the running stream. Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The moist relaxing vegetable store Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied 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; That 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 Of 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. Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls His horrors o'er the world, thou may'st indulge In feasts more genial, and impatient broach The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme. Steep'd in continual rains, or with raw fogs Bedew'd, our seasons droop; incumbent still A ponderous heaven o'erwhelms the sinking soul. Lab'ring with storms in heapy mountains rise Th' imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades Had left the dungeon of eternal night, Till black with thunder all the south descends. Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge Our melting clime; except the baleful east Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene. Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes This dismal change! The brooding elements Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath, Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? Or is it fix'd in the Decrees above That lofty Albion melt into the main? Indulgent nature! O dissolve this gloom! Bind in eternal adamant the winds That drown or wither: Give the genial west To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north: And may once more the circling seasons rule The year; not mix in every monstrous day.

Mean time, the moist malignity to shun Of burthen'd skies; mark where the dry champain Swells into chearful hills; where Marjoram And Thyme, the love of bees, perfume the air; And where the Cynorrhodon with the rose For fragrance vies; for in the thirsty soil Most fragrant breathe the aromatic tribes. There bid thy roofs high on the basking steep Ascend, there light thy hospitable fires. And let them see the winter morn arise, The summer evening blushing in the west; While with umbrageous oaks the ridge behind O'erhung, defends you from the blust'ring north, And bleak affliction of the peevish east. O! when the growling winds contend, and all The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm, To sink in warm repose, and hear the din Howl o'er the steady battlements, delights Above the luxury of vulgar sleep. The murmuring rivulet, and the hoarser strain Of waters rushing o'er the slippery rocks, Will nightly lull you to ambrosial rest. To please the fancy is no trifling good, Where health is studied; for whatever moves The mind with calm delight, promotes the just And natural movements of th' harmonious frame, Besides, the sportive brook for ever shakes The trembling air; that floats from hill to hill, From vale to mountain, with incessant change Of purest element, refreshing still Your airy seat, and uninfected Gods. Chiefly for this I praise the man who builds High on the breezy ridge, whose lofty sides Th' etherial deep with endless billows laves. His purer mansion nor contagious years Shall reach, nor deadly putrid airs annoy.

But 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; Dry 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. These to defy, and all the fates that dwell In cloister'd air tainted with steaming life, Let lofty ceilings grace your ample rooms; And still at azure noontide may your dome At every window drink the liquid sky.

Need we the sunny situation here, And theatres open to the south, commend? Here, where the morning's misty breath infests More than the torrid noon? How sickly grow, How pale, the plants in those ill-fated vales That, circled round with the gigantic heap Of mountains, never felt, nor ever hope To feel, the genial vigor of the sun! While on the neighbouring hill the rose inflames The verdant spring; in virgin beauty blows The tender lily, languishingly sweet; O'er every hedge the wanton woodbine roves, And autumn ripens in the summer's ray. Nor less the warmer living tribes demand The fost'ring fun: whose energy divine Dwells 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! If not the soul, the regent of this world, First born of heaven, and only less than God!