LITMIR.BIZ

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The dying, sickning, and the living world

      70Exhal'd, to fully heaven's transparent dome

       With dim mortality. It is not air

       That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine,

       Sated with exhalations rank and fell,

       The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw

      75Of nature; when from shape and texture she

       Relapses into fighting elements:

      ​

      It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass

       Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things.

       Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath,

      80With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more

       The solid frame than simple moisture can.

       Besides, immur'd in many a sullen bay

       That never felt the freshness of the breeze,

       This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows

      85With sickly rest: and (tho' the lungs abhor

       To drink the dun fuliginous abyss)

       Did not the acid vigour of the mine,

       Roll'd from so many thundring chimneys, tame

       The putrid salts that overswarm the sky;

      90This caustick venom would perhaps corrode

       Those tender cells that draw the vital air,

       In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew'd;

       Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn

       In countless pores o'er all the pervious skin,

      ​

      95Imbib'd, would poison the balsamic blood,

       And rouse the heart to every fever's rage.

       While yet you breathe, away! the rural wilds

       Invite; the mountains call you, and the vales,

       The woods, the dreams, and each ambrosial breeze

      100That fans the ever undulating sky;

       A kindly sky! whose soft'ring power regales

       Man, beast, and all the vegetable reign.

       Find then some woodland scene where nature smiles

       Benign, where all her honest children thrive.

      105To us there wants not many a happy feat;

       Look round the smiling land, such numbers rise

       We hardly fix, bewilder'd in our choice.

       See where enthron'd in adamantine state,

       Proud of her bards, imperial Windsor sits;

      110There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove

       Fail by the slowly-winding Thames; or where

       Broader she laves fair Richmond's green retreats,

      ​

      (Richmond that sees an hundred villas rise

       Rural or gay.) O! from the summer's rage

      115O! wrap me in the friendly gloom that hides

       Umbrageous Ham! But if the busy town

       Attract thee still to toil for power or gold,

       Sweetly thou mayst thy vacant hours possess

       In Hampstead, courted by the weftern wind;

      120Or Greenwich, waving o'er the winding flood;

       Or lose the world amid the sylvan wilds

       Of Dulwich, yet by barbarous arts unspoil'd.

       Green rise the Kentish hills in chearful air;

       But on the marshy plains that Essex spreads

      125Build not, nor rest too long thy wandering feet.

       For on a rustic throne of dewy turf,

       With baneful fogs her aching temples bound,

       Quartana there presides; meagre fiend

       Begot by Eurus, when his brutal force

      130Compress'd the slothful Naiad of the fens.

      ​

      From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest,

       With feverish blasts subdues the sick'ning land:

       Cold tremors come, and mighty love of rest,

       Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains

      135That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins,

       And rack the joints, and every torpid limb;

       Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats

       O'erflow; a short relief from former ills.

       Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine;

      140The vigour sinks, the habit melts away;

       The chearful, pure and animated bloom

       Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy

       Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad.

       And oft the sorceress, in her fated wrath,

      145Resigns them to the furies of her train;

       The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend

       Ting'd with her own accumulated gall.

      ​

      In quest of sites, avoid the mournful plain

       Where osiers thrive, and trees that love the lake;

      150Where 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

      155For 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;

      160Or 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.

      ​

      Yet not alone from humid skies we pine;

      165For air may be too dry. The subtle heaven,

       That winnows into dust the blasted downs,

       Bare and extended wide without a stream,

       Too fast imbibes th' attenuated lymph

       Which, by the surface, from the blood exhales.

      170The lungs grow rigid, and with toil essay

       Their flexible vibrations; or inflam'd,

       Their tender ever-moving structure thaws.

       Spoil'd of its limpid vehicle, the blood

       A mass of lees remains, a drossy tide

      175That flow as Lethe wanders thro' the veins,

       Unactive in the services of life,

       Unfit to lead its pitchy current thro'

       The secret mazy channels of the brain.

       The melancholic fiend, (that worst despair

      180Of

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