Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/135

B. IV. Grows vapid phlegm; along the tender nerves (To each slight impulse tremblingly awake) A subtle Fiend that mimics all the plagues Rapid and restless springs from part to part. The blooming honours of your youth are fallen; Your vigour pines; your vital powers decay; Diseases haunt you; and untimely Age Creeps on; unsocial, impotent, and lewd. Infatuate, impious, epicure! to waste The stores of pleasure, chearfulness, and health! Infatuate all who make delight their trade, And coy perdition every hour pursue.


 * Who pines with Love, or in lascivious flames

Consumes, is with his own consent undone: He chuses to be wretched, to be mad; And warn'd proceeds and wilful to his fate. But there's a Passion, whose tempestuous sway Rh