Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/18

10
 * 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. Rh