Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/58

50 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 Rh