CANTO FIFTH.
Come, rosy Health! thou pretty sun-burnt maid,
And laugh with Labor in the noon-day shade;
Awake with Temperance at the peep of dawn,
And brush the dews that deck the fragrant lawn.
Enchanting nymph! how often have I seen
Thy quick elastic footstep on the green,
At summer eve among the reaper train,
The favorite belle of many a rustic swain;
The village minstrel on the turf reclined,
To melting music all his soul resigned;—
The hills, the dales, the fields, and woods around
Seem wrapped in silence, listening to the sound,
Save that one hoary rock across the plain,
Returned in echo every silver strain.
Gay, blushing Health! without thy freshening glow
Protracted life were only conscious wo;
And earth’s unnumbered joys would end in pain,
If thou wert banished from the fair domain.
Be thou the blithe companion of my way,
Through cheerful years, to life’s remotest day;
Though babbling fame should eulogize me not,
Nor fortune gild my solitary cot.
Ye lovely fair, who deprecate the doom
Assigned by general taste to tarnished bloom,
Be wise in time—’tis folly to delay;
Cast all your vile cosmetic drugs away;
Exchange the shallow artifice of dress
For nature’s more enchanting loveliness;
And know that blooming health alone abides
Where chaste and temperate cleanliness resides.
As, when the sun from burning Cancer throws
His radiant fires till all the ether glows,
The spotted plague and fever’s frantic train
In pop’lous cities hold their ghastly reign,
By filth engendered—by intemperance fed,
Till half the living sink among the dead,
While pale affright, with desolating brand,
Spreads consternation through the trembling land;
So, in the breathing microcosm of man,
Each slight derangement of the general plan,
Each local malady of every name,
Disturbs throughout the sympathizing frame.
But most the teeth, for various use employed,
Disturb the system when themselves destroyed;(42)
For when these organs yielding to decay,
In morbid exhalations waste away,
The vital air, from heaven’s aerial flood,
That warms with life the circulating blood,
Bears to the heaving lungs the deadly bane,
Where all its noxious qualities remain,
While every breath the poisonous draught repeats,
And spreads disease with every pulse that beats.(43)
Nor less the nervous sympathy conveys
Each dental malady a thousand ways,(44)
For, as the witching music of the lyre,
Is heard along each vibratory wire,
What time the heaven-instructed minstrel flings
His hurried hand among the magic strings:—
So when disease invades the dental arch,
And strides in anguish on his angry march,
His burning touch, like the electric flame,
Flashes through every fibre of the frame;
Fever ensues, with all its raging fires,
And oft the maniac sufferer expires.(45)
And yet of all the evils that accrue
From loss of teeth, though neither small nor few,
The chief is this;—’tis nature’s general plan,
That all the solid aliments of man,
Before admission to the secret shrine,
Where vital chemistry, with skill divine,
Transforms the cruder mass to milky chyme,
By nature’s metamorphosis sublime,—
Should suffer comminution;—hence we find
The dental organs formed to cut, and grind,
And masticate the food:—this rightly done,
The process of digestion, well begun,
Results in health to each dependant part,
That feels the living impulse of the heart.(46)
But when, from loss of teeth, the food must pass,
A crude, and rigid, and unbroken mass,
To the digestive organs: who can know,
What various forms of complicated wo,
May rise terrific from that single source?(47)
For nature, once resisted in her course,
Breeds frightful things—a monstrous progeny!
Consumption, fevers, palsy, leprosy,
The hobbling gout, that chides, at every breath,
The lingering pace of all-destroying death;
And apoplexy, dragging to his doom
The half surviving victim of the tomb.
See thus the mortal life of erring man,
Reduced by vice and folly to a span;
And years of joy alloted him below,
Exchanged for fleeting months of bitter wo!
The Power Supreme, who gave all being birth,
And fashioned man the sovereign lord of earth,
Free-will and understanding both bestowed,
The likeness and the image of his God;
And gave what beast, bird, fish, could never reach,
The all-controlling attribute of speech.
Transcendant gift! that elevates our kind
To all the lofty pleasures of the mind;
To social joys;—to all the polished arts,
That spring from sympathy of kindred hearts!
This power of speech, in which are nicely wrought,
All shades of feeling, and all forms of thought;
The silver cord that binds all human kind;
The circulating medium of the mind;—
Results from organs formed with heavenly art,
To act in concert their appointed part.
With these the dentals hold the foremost place,
Since, to their loss or injury, we trace
The greater part of those imperfect sounds
With which the general speech of man abounds.
Behold the orator, in church or state,
When warm persuasion, or when cool debate
Impels the common mind to daring deeds,
While virtue triumphs, or a nation bleeds.
His vocal organs, trained with patient skill,
Perform their part, obedient to his will.
If rampant war, with all its dire alarms,
Employ his eloquence; the shock of arms,
The shouts of armies, and their dying groans,
Roll on his quivering lips in silver tones,
While murmuring crowds, impatient still to go,
Rush to the pathway leading to the foe!
If lovely innocence, when fair and young,
Fall by the vile seducer’s lying tongue,
And seek redress where justice holds her throne,
The trembling wretch, unfriended and alone,
And bathed in bitter tears, invokes the laws,
And calls on heaven to vindicate her cause:—
The orator appears:—his searching glance,
A moment, eyes the culprit wretch askance,
That crushed the bleeding flower:—words follow next,
And as the foaming mountain torrent, vext
By the projecting cliff, in angry bound,
Decends in cataracts, with thundering sound,
Till all the desert wild, and savage rock,
And hoary mountain, tremble at the shock,
So does the stream of eloquence impart
A palsied shuddering to the villain’s heart!
The listening crowd reply with loud acclaim,
While Emmet lives—immortal heir of fame!
On yonder hill, which freshening shades invest,
Beneath whose spreading boughs forever rest
The mouldering ashes of the son and sire,
The village church erects its modest spire.
Behold, each Sabbath morn, with measured pace,
The silent groups that seek that hallowed place,
And mark, how meek devotion worships there,
With heart uplifted in the hour of prayer.
The morning song of love is sweetly sung,
While heaven’s own flame inspires each tuneful tongue;
And see—the venerable man appears,
White with the hoary frosts of threescore years;—
The good old man, whose useful hours have flown,
To sooth all others’ sorrows but his own;—
Whose daily labors to mankind are given,
In charity, but all his heart to heaven.
So pure the life this virtuous man has passed,
That all his powers are perfect to the last;
No borrowed lock to grace his brow aspires;
No optic glass his vigorous eye requires;
He lacks no single tooth that nature gave,
Nor asks a staff to guide him to the grave.(48)
With voice subdued, and unobtrusive mein,
He speaks of heaven,—he paints the flowery scene,
Where angel-natures—forms of purest love,
Meet in the bowers of innocence above,
To drink at living fountains, and be fed
On fruits immortal, and the living bread,
Till gushing tears fall fast from every eye,
And faith and hope look smiling to the sky.
Yet, in that choir that sung the morning song,
One vacant seat afflicts the listening throng;
One well known voice, admired so oft before,
For sweetest melody, is heard no more.
Is Seraphina dead, whose melting strains
Had won the hearts of all the neighbouring swains?
Or does she now forsake the house of prayer,
And spurn her venerable pastor’s care?
Unjust suspicion! tarnish not her fame,
Nor let reproach attaint her spotless name;
For while her mellow voice obeyed her will,
She fondly lingered our musician still;
And though by cruel fate compelled to part,
She leaves us all the homage of her heart.
To lonly solitude she gives her hours,
In shady copse, or shadier garden-bowers:—
In silent grief, and unconsoled, she pines,
And scarce to heaven’s high will her soul resigns.
For, lo, the heavenly music of her lip—
So sweet, the laboring bees might stop to sip,
Has passed away; discordant notes succeed,
And Seraphina’s bosom lives to bleed.
Ye ask the cause:—by premature decay,
Two of her dental pearls have passed away;
The two essential to those perfect strains,
That charm the soul when heavenly music reigns.
But fly, ye swains, to Seraphina fly,
And bid her fastly flowing tears be dry;
Haste to her cottage, where in vain she seeks
To wipe the burning deluge from her cheeks;
And when you find her, soothe her frantic mind,
And bid her cast her sorrows to the wind;
In secret whisper this kind truth impart;—
There is a remedy:—the dental art
Can every varying tone with ease restore,
And give thee music sweeter than before!—Thus,
to desponding man in life’s dark way,
The angel, mercy, points the opening day;
And through the tear that trembles in his eye,
Reveals the glories of her kindred sky.(49)
END OF CANTO FIFTH.