The skin and lungs, and bake the thick’ning blood; Deep in the waving forest chuse your seat, Where fuming trees refresh the thirsty air; 225 And wake the fountains from their secret beds, And into lakes dilate the running stream. Here spread your gardens wide; and let the cool, The moist relaxing vegetable store Prevail in each repast: Your food supplied 230 By bleeding life, be gently wasted down, By soft decoction and a mellowing heat, To liquid balm; or, if the solid mass You chuse, tormented in the boiling wave; That thro’ the thirsty channels of the blood 235 A smooth diluted chyle may ever flow. The fragrant dairy from its cool recess Its nectar acid or benign will pour To drown your thirst; or let the mantling bowl Of keen Sherbet the fickle taste relieve. 240 For with the viscous blood the simple stream Will hardly mingle; and fermented cups Oft dissipate more moisture than they give. Yet when pale seasons rise, or winter rolls His horrors o’er the world, thou may’st indulge 245 In feasts more genial, and impatient broach The mellow cask. Then too the scourging air Provokes to keener toils than sultry droughts Allow. But rarely we such skies blaspheme. Steep’d in continual rains, or with raw fogs 250 Bedew’d, our seasons droop; incumbent still A ponderous heaven o’erwhelms the sinking soul. Lab’ring with storms in heapy mountains rise Th’ imbattled clouds, as if the Stygian shades Had left the dungeon of eternal night, 255 Till black with thunder all the south descends. Scarce in a showerless day the heavens indulge Our melting clime; except the baleful east Withers the tender spring, and sourly checks The fancy of the year. Our fathers talk 260 Of summers, balmy airs, and skies serene. Good heaven! for what unexpiated crimes This dismal change! The brooding elements Do they, your powerful ministers of wrath, Prepare some fierce exterminating plague? 265 Or is it fix’d in the Decrees above That lofty Albion melt into the main? Indulgent nature! O dissolve this gloom! Bind in eternal adamant the winds That drown or wither: Give the genial west 270 To breathe, and in its turn the sprightly north: And may once more the circling seasons rule The year; not mix in every monstrous day.