The Works of Abraham Cowley/Volume 2/To Dr. Scarborough
TO DR. SCARBOROUGH.
How long, alas! has our mad nation beenOf epidemick war the tragick scene,When Slaughter all the whileSeem'd like its sea, embracing round the isle,With tempests, and red waves, noise, and affright!Albion no more, nor to be nam'd from white!What province or what city did it spare?It, like a plague, infected all the air.Sure the unpeopled landWould now untill'd, desert, and naked stand,Had God's all-mighty handAt the same time let loose Diseases' rageTheir civil wars in man to wage. But thou by Heaven wert sentThis desolation to prevent,A medicine, and a counter-poison, to the age.Scarce could the sword dispatch more to the graveThan thou didst save;By wondrous art, and by successful care,The ruins of a civil war thou dost alone repair!
The inundations of all liquid Pain,And deluge Dropsy, thou dost drain.Fevers, so hot that one would sayThou might'st as soon hell-fires allay(The damn'd scarce more incurable than they)Thou dost so temper, that we find,Like gold, the body but refin'd,No unhealthful dross behind.The subtle Ague, that for sureness' sakeTakes its own times th' assault to make,And at each battery the whole fort does shake,When thy strong guards, and works, it spies,Trembles for itself, and flies.The cruel Stone, that restless pain,That's sometimes roll'd away in vain,But still, like Sysiphus's stone, returns again,Thou break'st and meltest by learn'd juices' force(A greater work, though short the way appear,Than Hannibal's by vinegar!)Oppressed Nature's necessary courseIt stops in vain; like Moses, thouStrik'st but the rock, and straight the waters freely flow. The Indian son of Lust (that foul diseaseWhich did on this his new-found world but lately seize,Yet since a tyranny has planted here,As wide and cruel as the Spaniard there)Is so quite rooted-out by thee,That thy patients seem to beRestor'd not to health only, but virginity.The Plague itself, that proud imperial ill,Which destroys towns, and does whole armies kill,If thou but succour the besieged heart,Calls all its poisons forth, and does depart,As if it fear'd no less thy art,Than Aaron's incense, or than Phineas' dart.What need there here repeated be by meThe vast and barbarous lexiconOf man's infirmity?At thy strong charms it must be goneThough a disease, as well as devil, were called Legion.
From creeping moss to soaring cedar thouDost all the powers and several portions know,Which father-Sun, and mother-Earth below,On their green infants here bestow:Canst all those magick virtues from them draw,That keep Disease and Death in awe;Who, whilst thy wondrous skill in plants they see,Fear lest the tree of life should be found out by thee.And thy well-travell'd knowledge, too, does giveNo less account of th' empire sensitive; Chiefly of man, whose body isThat active soul's metropolis.As the great artist in his sphere of glassSaw the whole scene of heavenly motions pass;So thou know'st all so well that's done within,As if some living crystal man thou 'dst seen.
Nor does this science make thy crown alone,But whole Apollo is thine own;His gentler arts, belov'd in vain by me,Are wedded and enjoy'd by thee.Thou 'rt by this noble mixture freeFrom the physicians' frequent malady,Fantastick incivility:There are who all their patients' chagrin have,As if they took each morn worse potions than they gave.And this great race of learning thou hast run,Ere that of life be half yet done;Thou see'st thyself still fresh and strong,And like t' enjoy thy conquests long.The first fam'd aphorism thy great master spoke,Did he live now he would revoke,And better things of man report;For thou dost make Life long, and Art but short.
Ah, learned friend! it grieves me, when I thinkThat thou with all thy art must die,As certainly as I;And all thy noble reparations sinkInto the sure-wrought mine of treacherous mortality. Like Archimedes, honourably in vain,Thou hold'st out towns that must at last be ta'en,And thou thyself, their great defender, slain.Let's e'en compound, and for the present live,’Tis all the ready-money Fate can give;Unbend sometimes thy restless care,And let thy friends so happy beT' enjoy at once their health and thee:Some hours, at least, to thine own pleasures spare:Since the whole stock may soon exhausted be,Bestow 't not all in charity.Let Nature and let Art do what they please,When all's done, Life is an incurable disease.