Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/134

126 And what was Love before is Madness now. Is health your care, or luxury your aim, Be temperate still: When Nature bids obey; Her wild impatient sallies bear no curb. But when the prurient habit of delight, Or loose Imagination, spurs you on To deeds above your strength, impute it not To Nature: Nature all compulsion hates. Ah! let nor luxury nor vain renown Urge you to feats you well might sleep without; To make what should be rapture a fatigue, A tedious task; nor in the wanton arms Of twining Laïs melt your manhood down. For from the colliquation of soft joys How chang'd you rise! the ghost of what you was! Languid, and melancholy, and gaunt, and wan; Your veins exhausted and your nerves unstrung. Spoil'd of its balm and sprightly zeft, the blood Rh