What star I know not, but some star, I find, Has given thee an ascendant o'er my mind. CORNUTUS. Nature is ever various in her frame; Each has a different will, and few the same. The greedy merchants, led by lucre, run To the parched Indies, and the rising sun; From thence hot pepper and rich drugs they bear, Bartering for spices their Italian ware; The lazy glutton, safe at home, will keep, Indulge his sloth, and batten with his sleep: One bribes for high preferments in the state; A second shakes the box, and sits up late; Another shakes the bed, dissolving there, Till knots upon his gouty joints appear, And chalk is in his crippled fingers found; Rots, like a doddered oak, and piecemeal falls to ground; Then his lewd follies he would late repent, And his past years, that in a mist were spent. PERSIUS. But thou art pale in nightly studies grown, To make the Stoic institutes thy own:[238] Thou long, with studious care, hast tilled our youth, And sown our well-purged ears with wholesome truth. From thee both old and young with profit learn } The bounds of good and evil to discern. } CORNUTUS. Unhappy he who does this work adjourn, } And to to-morrow would the search delay; His lazy morrow will be like to-day. PERSIUS. But is one day of ease too much to borrow? CORNUTUS.