Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/15

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,