Thick in the many-beaten road of life,
A thousand maladies are posted round,
With wretched man to wage eternal strife
Unseen, like ambush'd Indians, till they wound.
There the swol'n hydrop stands, the wat'ry rheum,
The northern scurvy, blotch with lep'rous scale;
And moping ever in the cloister'd gloom
Of learned sloth, the bookish asthma pale:
And the shunn'd hag unsightly, that ordain'd
On Europe's sons to wreak the faithless sword
Of Cortez, with the blood of millions stain'd,
O'er dog-ey'd lust the tort'ring scourge abhorr'd,
Shakes threat'ning; since the while she wing'd her flight
From Amazon's broad wave, and Andes' snow-clad height.