Nor should I wander doubtful of my way, Had I the lights of that sagacious mind Which taught to check the pestilential fire, 55 And quel the dreaded Python of the Nile. O Thou belov’d by all the graceful arts, Thou long the fav’rite of the healing powers, Indulge, O MEAD! a well-design’d essay, Howe’er imperfect: and permit that I 60 My little knowledge with my country share, Till you the rich Asclepian stores unlock, And with new graces dignify the theme. YE who amid this feverish world would wear A body free of pain, of cares a mind; 65 Fly the rank city, shun its turbid air; Breathe not the chaos of eternal smoke And volatile corruption, from the dead, The dying, sickning, and the living world Exhal’d, to sully heaven’s transparent dome 70 With dim mortality. It is not air That from a thousand lungs reeks back to thine, Sated with exhalations rank and fell, The spoil of dunghills, and the putrid thaw Of nature; when from shape and texture she 75 Relapses into fighting elements: It is not air, but floats a nauseous mass Of all obscene, corrupt, offensive things. Much moisture hurts; but here a sordid bath, With oily rancor fraught, relaxes more 80 The solid frame than simple moisture can. Besides, immur’d in many a sullen bay That never felt the freshness of the breeze, This slumbring deep remains, and ranker grows With sickly rest: and (tho’ the lungs abhor 85 To drink the dun fuliginous abyss) Did not the acid vigour of the mine, Roll’d from so many thundring chimneys, tame The putrid salts that overswarm the sky; This caustick venom would perhaps corrode 90 Those tender cells that draw the vital air, In vain with all their unctuous rills bedew’d; Or by the drunken venous tubes, that yawn In countless pores o’er all the pervious skin, Imbib’d, would poison the balsamic blood, 95 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 streams, and each ambrosial breeze That fans the ever undulating sky; 100 A kindly sky! whose fost’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. To us there wants not many a happy seat; 105 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; There chuse thy seat, in some aspiring grove 110 Fast by the slowly-winding Thames; or where