Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/40

Of Pales; soft, delicious and benign:
The balmy quintescence of every flower,
115And every grateful herb that decks the spring;
The soft'ring dew of tender sprouting life;
The best reflection of declining age;
The kind restorative of those who lie
Half-dead and panting, from the doubtful strife
120Of nature struggling in the grasp of death.
Try all the bounties of this fertile globe,
There is not such a salutary food,
As suits with every stomach. But (except,
Amid the mingled mass of fish and fowl,
125And boil'd and bak'd, you hesitate by which
You sunk oppress'd, or whether not by all;)
Taught by experience soon you may discern
What pleases, what offends. Avoid the cates
That lull the sicken'd appetite too long;
130Or heave with feverish flushings all the face,