Two Serpent-forms incumbent on the main,
340 Lashing the white waves with redundant train,
        Arch’d their blue necks, and (hook their towering crests,
        And plough’d their foamy way with speckled breasts;
        Then darting fierce amid the affrighted throngs,
        Roll’d their red eyes, and shot their forked tongues,—­
345 —­Two daring Youths to guard the hoary fire
        Thwart their dread progress, and provoke their ire. 
        Round sire and sons the scaly monsters roll’d,
        Ring above ring, in many a tangled fold,
        Close and more close their writhing limbs surround,
350 And fix with foamy teeth the envenom’d wound. 
        —­With brow upturn’d to heaven the holy Sage
        In silent agony sustains their rage;
        While each fond Youth, in vain, with piercing cries
        Bends on the tortured Sire his dying eyes.
355 “Drink deep, sweet youths” seductive VITIS cries,
        The maudlin tear-drop glittering in her eyes;
        Green leaves and purple clusters crown her head,
        And the tall Thyrsus stays her tottering tread.
        —­Five hapless swains with soft assuasive smiles
360 The harlot meshes in her deathful toils;
        “Drink deep,” she carols, as she waves in air
        The mantling goblet, “and forget your care.”—­
        O’er the dread feast malignant Chemia scowls,
        And mingles poison in the nectar’d bowls;
365 Fell Gout peeps grinning through the flimsy scene,
        And bloated Dropsy pants behind unseen;
        Wrapp’d in his robe white Lepra hides his stains,
        And silent Frenzy writhing bites his chains.

[Vitis. 1. 355.  Vine.  Five males, one female.  The juice of the ripe grape is a nutritive and agreeable food, consisting chiefly of sugar and mucilage.  The chemical process of fermentation converts this sugar into spirit, converts food into poison!  And it has thus become the curse of the Christian world, producing more than half of our chronical diseases; which Mahomet observed, and forbade the use of it to his disciples.  The Arabians invented distillation; and thus, by obtaining the spirit of fermented liquors in a less diluted slate, added to its destructive quality.  A Theory of the Diabaetes and Dropsy, produced by drinking fermented or spirituous liquors, is explained in a Treatise on the inverted motions of the lymphatic system, published by Dr. Darwin.  Cadell.]

        So when PROMETHEUS braved the Thunderer’s ire,
370 Stole from his blazing throne etherial fire,
        And, lantern’d in his breast, from realms of day
        Bore the bright treasure to his Man of clay;—­
        High on cold Caucasus by VULCAN bound,
        The lean impatient Vulture fluttering round,
375 His writhing limbs in vain he twists and strains
        To break or loose the adamantine chains. 
        The gluttonous bird, exulting in his pangs,
        Tears his swoln liver with remorseless fangs.