Observe the circling year. How unperceiv’d Her seasons change! Behold! by slow degrees, Stern Winter tam’d into a ruder spring; The ripen’d Spring a milder summer glows; 475 Departing Summer sheds Pomona’s store; And aged Autumn brews the winter-storm. Slow as they come, these changes come not void Of mortal shocks: The cold and torrid reigns, The two great periods of th’ important year, 480 Are in their first approaches seldom safe: Funereal autumn all the sickly dread, And the black fates deform the lovely spring. He well advis’d, who taught our wiser sires Early to borrow Muscovy’s warm spoils, 485 Ere the first frost has touch’d the tender blade; And late resign them, tho’ the wanton spring Should deck her charms with all her sister’s rays. For while the effluence of the skin maintains Its native measure, the pleuritic Spring 490 Glides harmless by; and Autumn, sick to death With sallow Quartans, no contagion breathes. I in prophetic numbers could unfold The omens of the year: what seasons teem With what diseases; what the humid South 495 Prepares, and what the Dæmon of the East: But you perhaps refuse the tedious song. Besides, whatever plagues in heat, or cold, Or drought, or moisture dwell, they hurt not you, Skill’d to correct the vices of the sky, 500 And taught already how to each extream To bend your life. But should the public bane Infect you, or some trespass of your own, Or flaw of nature hint mortality: Soon as a not unpleasing horror glides 505 Along the spine, thro’ all your torpid limbs; When first: the head throbs, or the stomach feels A sickly load, a weary pain the loins; Be Celsus call’d: The fates come rushing on; The rapid fates admit of no delay. 510 While wilful you, and fatally secure, Expect to morrow’s more auspicious sun, The growing pest, whose infancy was weak And easy vanquish’d, with triumphant sway O’erpow’rs your life. For want of timely care 515 Millions have died of medicable wounds.