What dext’rous thousands just within the goal Of wild debauch direct their nightly course! Perhaps no sickly qualms bedim their days, No morning admonitions shock the head. But ah! what woes remain! Life rolls apace, 505 And that incurable disease old age, In youthful bodies more severely felt, More sternly active, shakes their blasted prime: Except kind nature by some hasty blow Prevent the lingering fates. For know, whate’er 510 Beyond its natural fervor hurries on The sanguine tide; whether the frequent bowl, High-season’d fare, or exercise to toil Protracted; spurs to its last stage tir’d life, And sows the temples with untimely snow. When life is new, the ductile fibres feel 515 The heart’s increasing force; and, day by day, The growth advances; till the larger tubes, Acquiring (from their elemental[5] veins, Condens’d to solid chords) a firmer tone, Sustain, and just sustain, th’ impetuous blood. 520 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 Of viscous fluids and elastic tubes; 525 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, By nature fix’d, whence life must downwards tend. 530 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 To hard unyielding unelastic bone, 535 Thro’ tedious channels the congealing flood Crawls lazily, and hardly wanders on; It loiters still: And now it stirs no more. This is the period few attain; the death Of nature: Thus (so heav’n ordain’d it) life 540 Destroys itself; and could these laws have chang’d, Nestor might now the fates of Troy relate; And Homer live immortal as his song.