Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/64

520Sustain, and just sustain, th' impetuous blood.
Here stops the growth. With overbearing pulse
And pressure, still the great destroy the small;
Still with the ruins of the small grow strong.
Life glows mean time, amid the grinding force
525Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes;
Its various functions vigorously are plied
By strong machinery; and in solid health
The man confirm'd long triumphs o'er disease.
But the full ocean ebbs: There is a point,
530By nature fix'd, whence life must downwards tend.
For still the beating tide consolidates
The stubborn vessels, more reluctant still,
To the weak throbbings of th' enfeebled heart.
This languishing, these strengthning by degrees
535To hard unyielding unelastic bone,
Thro' tedious channels the congealing flood