Nor tardier fruits of cruder kind are lost,
But tamed with fire, or mellow’d by the frost;
While kine to pails distended udders bring,
And bees their honey redolent of spring;
While earth not only can your needs supply,
But lavish of her store, provides for luxury;
A guiltless feast administers with ease,
And without blood is prodigal to please.
Wild beasts their maws with their slain brethren fill;
And yet not all, for some refuse to kill;
Sheep, goats, and oxen, and the nobler steed,
On browse, and corn, and flowery meadows feed.
Bears, tigers, wolves, the lion’s angry brood,
Whom Heaven indued with principles of blood,
He wisely sunder’d from the rest, to yell
In forests, and in lonely caves to dwell;
Where stronger beasts oppress the weak by might,
And all in prey and purple feasts delight.
“ ‘Oh impious use! to nature’s laws opposed,
Where bowels are in other bowels closed:
Where fatten’d by their fellows’ fat, they thrive;
Maintain’d by murder, and by death they live.
’Tis then for naught, that mother earth provides
The stores of all she shows, and all she hides,
If men with fleshy morsels must be fed,
And chew with bloody teeth the breathing bread
What else is this, but to devour our guests,
And barb’rously renew cyclopean feasts!
We, by destroying life, our life sustain;
And gorge the ungodly maw with meats obscene.
“ ‘Not so the golden age, who fed on fruit,
Nor durst with bloody meals their mouths pollute.
Then birds in airy space might safely move,
And timorous hares on heaths securely rove:
Nor needed fish the guileful hooks to fear,
For all was peaceful; and that peace sincere.
Whoever was the wretch (and cursed be he)
That envied first our food’s simplicity,
The essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,
And after forged the sword to murder man.
Had he the sharpen’d steel alone employ’d
On beasts of prey, that other beasts destroy’d;
Or man invaded with their fangs and paws,
This had been justified by nature’s laws
And self-defence: but who did feasts begin
Of flesh, he stretch’d necessity to sin.
To kill man-killers man has lawful power,
But not the extended license to devour.
“ ‘Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
The sow, with her broad snout, for rooting up
The entrusted seed, was judged to spoil the crop,
And intercept the sweating farmer’s hope:
The covetous churl, of unforgiving kind,
The offender to the bloody priest resign’d:
Her hunger was no plea: for that she died.
The goat came next in order to be tried:
The goat had cropp’d the tendrils of the vine:
In vengeance laity and clergy join,
Where one had lost his profit, one his wine.
Here was at least some shadow of offence;
The sheep was sacrificed on no pretence,
But meek and unresisting innocence.
A patient, useful creature, born to bear
The warm and woolly fleece, that clothed her murderer;
And daily to give down the milk she bred,
A tribute for the grass on which she fed.
Living, both food and raiment she supplies,
And is of least advantage when she dies.
“ ‘How did the toiling ox his death deserve,
A downright simple drudge, and horn to serve?
Oh tyrant! with what justice canst thou hope
The promise of the year, a plenteous crop;
When thou destroy’st thy labouring steer, who till’d
And plough’d with pains, thy else ungrateful field?
From his yet reeking neck, to draw the yoke,
That neck with which the surly clods he broke;
And to the hatchet yield thy husbandman,
Who finish’d autumn, and the spring began.
“ ‘Nor this alone! but Heaven itself to bribe,
We to the gods our impious acts ascribe;
First recompense with death their creatures’ toil;
Then call the bless’d above to share the spoil:
The fairest victim must the powers appease,
(So fatal ’tis sometimes too much to please!)
A purple fillet his broad brow adorns,
With flowery garlands crown’d, and gilded horns:
He hears the murderous prayer the priest prefers,
But understands not ’tis his doom he hears:
Beholds the meal between his temples cast;
(The fruit and product of his labours past;)
And in the water views perhaps the knife,
Uplifted to deprive him of his life;
Then broken up alive, his entrails sees
Torn out, for priests to inspect the gods’ decrees.
“ ‘From whence, oh mortal men, this gust of blood
Have you derived, and interdicted food?
Be taught by me this dire delight to shun,
Warn’d by my precepts, by my practice won:
And when you eat the well-deserving beast,
Think on the labourer of your field you feast!
“ ‘Now since the god inspires me to proceed,
Be that, whate’er inspiring power, obey’d:
For I will sing of mighty mysteries,
Of truths conceal’d before, from human eyes,
Dark oracles unveil, and open all the skies.
Pleased as I am to walk along the sphere
Of shining stars, and travel with the year,
To leave the heavy earth, and scale the height
Of Atlas, who supports the heavenly weight;
To look from upper light, and thence survey
Mistaken mortals wandering from the way,
And wanting wisdom, fearful for the state
Of future things, and trembling at their fate!
“ ‘Those I would teach; and by right reason bring
To think of death as but an idle thing.
Why thus affrighted at an empty name,
A dream of darkness, and fictitious flame?
Vain themes of wit, which but in poems pass,
And fables of a world that never was?
What feels the body when the soul expires,
By time corrupted, or consumed by fires?
Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats
In other forms, and only changes seats.
“ ‘Ev’n I, who these mysterious truths declare,
Was once Euphorbus in the Trojan war;
My name and lineage I remember well,
And how in fight by Sparta’s king I fell.
In Argive Juno’s fame I late beheld
My buckler hung on high, and own’d my former shield.
“ ‘Then death, so call’d, is but old matter dress’d
In some new figure, and a varied vest:
Thus all things are but alter’d, nothing dies;
And here and there the unbodied spirit flies,
By time, or force, or sickness dispossess’d,
And lodges, where it lights, in man or beast;
Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind;
From tenement to tenement is toss’d,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost:
And, as the soften’d wax new seals receives,
This face assumes, and that impression leaves;
Now call’d by one, now by another name;
The form is only changed, the wax is still the same.
So death, so call’d, can but the form deface;
The immortal soul flies out in empty space,
To seek her fortune
