Souls to which Destiny 'portions new mutable bodies,
Imbibe the Lethean oblivion of prior existence.

A spirit internal supports all-earth, ocean and ether,
Flies to the moon's lucid orb, stars distant and sunlike,
The mind, through each member diffused, all matter enlivens;
Thence men and animals sprung, birds, insects and fishes.
Virgil, En. VI.
PYTHAGORAS divine, him Samos bore,

But since self-banished from his native shore,
Because he hated tyrants, nor could bear

The chains, which none but servile souls will wear:
The crowd with silent admiration stand,

And heard him as they heard their god's command;
While he discours'd of heav'n's mysterious laws,
The world's original, and Nature's cause.

He first the taste of flesh from tables drove, And argu'd well, if arguments could move:

"O mortals, from your fellows' blood abstain,
Nor taint your bodies with a food profane:
While corn and pulse by nature are bestow'd,
And planted orchards bend their willing load;
While labour'd gardens wholesome herbs produce,
And teeming vines afford their gen'rous juice;
Nor tardier fruits of cruder kinds are lost,
But tam'd 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 browze, and corn, and flow'ry meadows, feed.
Bears, tigers, wolves, the lion's angry brood,
Whom heav'n endu'd 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.

O impious use! to Nature's laws oppos'd,
Where bowels are in others bowels clos'd;
Where, fatten'd by their fellow's fat, they thrive;
Maintain'd by murder, and by death they live.
"Tis then for nought 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 th' 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 tim❜rous 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 curs'd be he
That envy'd first our food's simplicity!)
Th' essay of bloody feasts on brutes began,
And after forg'd 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 pow'r,
But not th' 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
Th' intrusted seed, was judg'd to spoil the crop,
And intercept the sweating farmer's hope:
The cov'tous churl, of unforgiving kind,
Th' 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 cropt 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 sacrific'd on no pretence,
But meek, and unresisting innocence:
A patient, useful creature, born to bear

The warm and woolly fleece, that cloth'd 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 born to serve?
O tyrant! with what justice canst thou hope
The promise of the year, a plenteous crop,

*!

When thou destroy'st thy lab'ring 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 Heav'n 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 pow'rs appease,
(So fatal 'tis sometimes too much to please!)
A purple fillet his broad brows adorns,

With flow'ry garlands crown'd, and gilded horns;
He hears the murd'rous pray'r the priest prefers,
But understands not 'tis his doom he hears:
Beholds the meal betwixt 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 t' inspect the gods' decrees.
From whence, O mortal man, this gust of blood
Have you deriv'd, 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 lab'rer of your field you feast!

"All 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 consum'd by fires?
Nor dies the spirit, but new life repeats

In other forms, and only changes seats.
Then Death, so call'd, is but old matter drest
In some new figure, and a varied vest:

Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies;
And here and there th' unbodied spirit flies,
By time, or force, or sickness dispossest,
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 tost,

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 chang'd, the wax is still the same:
So Death, so call'd, can but the form deface;
Th' immortal soul flies out in empty space,
To seek her fortune in some other place.

This let me further add, that Nature knows
No stedfast station, bút, or ebbs or flows:
Ever in motion; she destroys her old,
And casts new figures in another mould.
E'en times are in perpetual flux, and run,
Like rivers from their fountain, roliing on.
For time, no more than streams, is at a stay;
The flying hour is ever on her way:
And as the fountain still supplies her store,
The wave behind impels the wave before;
Thus in successive course the minutes run,
And urge their predecessor minutes on,
Still moving, ever new: For, former things
Are set aside, like abdicated kings;
And ev'ry moment alters what is done,
And innovates some act till then unknown.

E'en our own bodies daily change receive,

Some part of what was theirs before, they leave;
Nor are to-day what yesterday they were;
Nor the whole same to morrow will appear.
Time was when we were sow'd, and just began,
From some few fruitful drops, the promise of a man:
Then Nature's hand (fermented as it was)
Moulded to shape the soft, coagulated mass;
And when the little man was fully form'd,
The breathless embryo with a spirit warm'd;