Life’s water is it. Hast thou drunk? Health spring from thence!
Those words thou mayst consider life’s fount, if thou list;
Their sense it is important thou shouldst not have missed.
One other theme, my friend, fix firmly in thy mind.
’Tis patent as thy soul; as subtle thou’lt it find.355
At times as venomous as adder’s fatal fang;
At times as healthful as the food from heaven that sprang.
Now lethal; now again remedial, by God’s will.
At one time blasphemy; then, holy rapture’s thrill.
Thus will it, now, be fatal to a human soul;