TO HEALTH.
Health, rosy nymph, the pleasing boon
Of happiness thou can’st bestow——
Without thee, life’s best journey soon
Becomes a pilgrimage of woe.
Shunning the palace, did’st thou dwell
With Slav’ry in his gloomy cell,
More blest the captive in the mine,
Than he for whom the metals shine.
But no—thy haunt cannot be there
Th’ abode of pining misery,
Where the sad bosom of despair
Heaves with unpity’d agony——
Nor, wanton, dost thou love to sport,
In pleasure’s gay delusive court—
Over the gem-imbossed vase,
To smile in Bacchus’ ruddy face.
Thou fly’st th’ intoxicating bowl,
Fountain of madness and disease,
Whose wild and absolute controul,
The vanquish’d reason sways.
Thou shun’st the fragrant myrtle groves,
Which the Paphian Venus loves—
Where, while Pan pipes a roundelay,
Th’ unblushing nymphs and satyrs play.
Ah, modest Health, from scenes like these,
Thou turn’st thy steps aside, to haste
And catch the balmy morning breeze,
Its spirit-giving breath to taste;
Where bath’d in view some valley lies,
Or up a mountain’s woody rise—
Whence stretching to the eastern sky,
Bright rural prospects greet the eye.
Here, a deep forest widely spread,
Its variegated foliage shows,——
There, rolling thro’ a flowery mead,
With rapid course, a river flows
On to the sea—where meets the view
Thro’ opening hills its bosom blue,
Save when a white-sail flies the gale before,
Or a wave breaks upon the rocky shore.
And as thou dart’st thy looks around,
O’er the lively landscape smiling,
More blythe the ploughman’s carols sound,
His tedious furrow’d way beguiling——
More sweet the birds their songs renew,—
More fresh each blooming flowret’s hue——
From every valley springs, without alloy,
A general cheerfulness—a burst of joy.