Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/64

56 Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood. Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse And pressure, still the great destroy the small; Still with the ruins of the small grow strong. Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes; Its various functions vigorously are plied By strong machinery; and in solid health The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease. But the full ocean ebbs: There is a point, By nature fix'd, whence life must downwards tend. For still the beating tide consolidates The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still, To the weak throbbings of th' enfeebled heart. This languishing, these strengthning by degrees To hard unyielding unelastic bone, Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood Rh