Page:The Art of Preserving Health - A Poem in Four Books.djvu/17

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B. I.
Preserving HEALTH.
9

From such a mixture sprung this fitful pest,
With feverish blasts subdues the sick'ning land:
Cold tremors come, and mighty love of rest,
Convulsive yawnings, lassitude, and pains
135That sting the burden'd brows, fatigue the loins,
And rack the joints, and every torpid limb;
Then parching heat succeeds, till copious sweats
O'erflow; a short relief from former ills.
Beneath repeated shocks the wretches pine;
140The vigour sinks, the habit melts away;
The chearful, pure and animated bloom
Dies from the face, with squalid atrophy
Devour'd, in sallow melancholy clad.
And oft the sorceress, in her fated wrath,
145Resigns them to the furies of her train;
The bloated Hydrops, and the yellow fiend
Ting'd with her own accumulated gall.


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