Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/116

And quick vibrations thro' the bowels drive
The restless blood, which in unactive days
Would loiter else thro' unelastic tubes.
Deem it not trifling while I recommend
80What posture suits: To stand and sit by turns.
As nature prompts, is best. But o'er your leaves
To lean for ever, cramps the vital parts,
And robs the fine machinery of its play.

'Tis the great art of life to manage well
85The restless mind. For ever on pursuit
Of knowledge bent it starves the grosser powers.
Quite unemploy'd, against its own repose
Its turns its fatal edge, and sharper pangs
Than what the body knows embitter life.
90Chiefly where Solitude, sad nurse of care,
To sickly musing gives the pensive mind.
There madness enters; and the dim-ey'd Fiend,