LXXV

Of limbs enormous, but withal unsound,
Soft-swoln, and pale, here lay the Hydropsy:
Unwieldy man! with belly monstrous round,
For ever fed with watery supply;

For still he drank, and yet he still was dry.

And moping here did Hypochondria sit,

Mother of Spleen, in robes of various dye,

Who vexed was full oft with ugly fit;

And some her frantic deemed, and some her deemed a wit.

LXXVI

A lady proud she was, of ancient blood,

Yet oft her fear her pride made crouchen low:
She felt, or fancied in her fluttering mood,
All the diseases which the spittles know,
And sought all physic which the shops bestow,
And still new leaches and new drugs would try,
Her humour ever wavering to and fro;

For sometimes she would laugh, and sometimes cry, Then sudden waxèd wroth; and all she knew not why.

LXXVII

Fast by her side a listless maiden pined, With aching head and squeamish heart-burnings; Pale, bloated, cold, she seemed to hate mankind, Yet loved in secret all forbidden things. And here the Tertian shakes his chilling wings : The sleepless, Gout here counts the crowing cocksA wolf now gnaws him, now a serpent stings: Whilst Apoplexy crammed Intemperance knocks Down to the ground at once, as butcher felleth ox.

CANTO II

The Knight of Art and Industry,
And his atchievements fair;
That, by this Castle's overthrow,
Secured, and crowned were.

I

ESCAPED the castle of the sire of sin, Ah! where shall I so sweet a dwelling find? For all around without, and all within, Nothing save what delightful was and kind, of goodness savouring and a tender mind, E'er rose to view. But now another strain, Of doleful note, alas! remains behind : I now must sing of pleasure turned to pain, And of the false enchanter, Indolence, complain.

II

Is there no patron to protect the Muse,

And fence for her Parnassus' barren soil ?

To every labour its reward accrues,

And they are sure of bread who swink and moil;
But a fell tribe the Aonian hive despoil,

As ruthless wasps oft rob the painful bee:
Thus, while the laws not guard that noblest toil,
Ne for the Muses other meed decree,

They praised are alone, and starve right merrily.

III

I care not, fortune, what you me deny : You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face : You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve. Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave : Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.

1

IV

Come, then, my muse, and raise a bolder song : Come, lig no more upon the bed of sloth, Dragging the lazy languid line along, Fond to begin, but still to finish loth, Thy half-writ scrolls all eaten by the moth: Arise, and sing that generous imp of fame Who, with the sons of softness nobly wroth, To sweep away this human lumber came, Or in a chosen few to rouse the slumbering flame.

V

In Fairy-land there lived a knight of old,
Of feature stern, Selvaggio well ycleped,
A rough unpolished man, robust and bold,
But wondrous poor: he neither sowed nor reaped,
Ne stores in summer for cold winter heaped ;

In hunting all his days away he wore;

Now scorched by June, now in November steeped,
Now pinched by biting January sore,

He still in woods pursued the libbard and the boar.

VI

As he one morning, long before the dawn,
Pricked through the forest to dislodge his prey,
Deep in the winding bosom of a lawn,

With wood wild-fringed, he marked a taper's ray,
That from the beating rain and wintry fray
Did to a lonely cot his steps decoy :

There, up to earn the needments of the day,
He found dame Poverty, nor fair nor coy;
Her he compressed, and filled her with a lusty boy.

VII

Amid the greenwood shade this boy was bred, And grow at last a knight of muchel fame, Of active mind and vigorous lustyhed, The Knight of Arts and Industry by name. Earth was his bed, the boughs his roof did frame; He knew no beverage but the flowing stream; His tasteful well-earned food the silvan game, Or the brown fruit with which the woodlands teem: The same to him glad summer or the winter breme.

VIII

So passed his youthly morning, void of care, Wild as the colts that through the commons run:

For him no tender parents troubled were;

He of the forest seemed to be the son,

And certes had been utterly undone

But that Minerva pity of him took,

With all the gods that love the rural wonne, That teach to tame the soil and rule the crook; Ne did the sacred Nine disdain a gentle look.

IX

Of fertile genius, him they nurtured well
In every science and in every art

By which mankind the thoughtless brutes excel,
That can or use, or joy, or grace impart,
Disclosing all the powers of head and heart :
Ne were the goodly exercises spared

That brace the nerves or make the limbs alert,
And mix elastic force with firmness hard :

Was never knight on ground mote be with him compared.

X

Sometimes, with early morn, he mounted gay
The hunter-steed, exulting o'er the dale,
And drew the roseate breath of orient day :
Sometimes, retiring to the secret vale,

Yclad in steel, and bright with burnished mail,
He strained the bow, or tossed the sounding spear,
Or, darting on the goal, outstript the gale,

Or wheeled the chariot in its mid career,

Or strenuous wrestled hard with many a tough compeer.

XI

At other times he pryed through Nature's store,
Whate'er she in the ethereal round contains,
Whate'er she hides beneath her verdant floor,
The vegetable and the mineral reigns;

Or else he scanned the globe, those small domains,
Where restless mortals such a turmoil keep,
Its seas, its floods, its mountains, and its plains;
But more he searched the mind, and roused from

sleep

Those moral seeds whence we heroic actions reap.