By chase our long-lived fathers earn’d their food;
  Toil strung the nerves, and purified the blood: 
  But we their sons, a pamper’d race of men, 90
  Are dwindled down to threescore years and ten. 
  Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,
  Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught. 
  The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
  God never made his work for man to mend.

    The tree of knowledge, once in Eden placed,
  Was easy found, but was forbid the taste: 
  Oh, had our grandsire walk’d without his wife,
  He first had sought the better plant of life! 
  Now both are lost:  yet, wandering in the dark, 100
  Physicians, for the tree, have found the bark: 
  They, labouring for relief of human kind,
  With sharpen’d sight some remedies may find;
  The apothecary-train is wholly blind,
  From files a random recipe they take,
  And many deaths of one prescription make. 
  Garth,[29] generous as his Muse, prescribes and gives;
  The shopman sells; and by destruction lives: 
  Ungrateful tribe! who, like the viper’s brood,
  From medicine issuing, suck their mother’s blood! 110
  Let these obey; and let the learn’d prescribe;
  That men may die, without a double bribe: 
  Let them, but under their superiors, kill;
  When doctors first have sign’d the bloody bill;
  He ’scapes the best, who, nature to repair,
  Draws physic from the fields, in draughts of vital air.

    You hoard not health, for your own private use;
  But on the public spend the rich produce. 
  When, often urged, unwilling to be great,
  Your country calls you from your loved retreat, 120
  And sends to senates, charged with common care,
  Which none more shuns, and none can better bear;
  Where could they find another form’d so fit,
  To poise, with solid sense, a sprightly wit? 
  Were these both wanting, as they both abound,
  Where could so firm integrity be found? 
  Well born, and wealthy, wanting no support,
  You steer betwixt the country and the court: 
  Nor gratify whate’er the great desire,
  Nor grudging give what public needs require. 130
  Part must be left, a fund when foes invade;
  And part employ’d to roll the watery trade: 
  Even Canaan’s happy land, when worn with toil,
  Required a sabbath-year to mend the meagre soil.

    Good senators (and such as you) so give,
  That kings may be supplied, the people thrive. 
  And he, when want requires, is truly wise,
  Who slights not foreign aids, nor over-buys;
  But on our native strength, in time of need, relies. 
  Munster was bought, we boast not the success; 140
  Who fights for gain, for greater makes his peace.