When hunger calls, obey; nor often wait 230
Till hunger sharpen to corrosive pain:
For the keen appetite will feast beyond
What nature well can bear; and one extreme
Ne’er without danger meets its own reverse.
Too greedily th’ exhausted veins absorb 235
The recent chyle, and load enfeebled powers
Oft to th’ extinction of the vital flame.
To the pale cities, by the firm-set siege
And famine humbled, may this verse be borne;