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Nor are to-day, what yesterday they were; 
Nor the whole same to-morrow will appear. 
Thus are our bodies never at a stand, 
But chang’d by Nature’s innovating hand; 
All things are alter’d, nothing is destroy’d, 
The shifted scene for some new show employ’d. 
Then, to be born, is to begin to be 
Some other thing we were not formerly: 
And what we call to die, is not t’ appear, 
Or be the thing, that formerly we were. 
Those very elements, which we partake 
Alive, when dead some other bodies make: 
Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse; 
But death on deathless substance has no force. 
The grubs from their sexangular abode 
Crawl out unfinish’d, like the maggot’s brood: 
Trunks without limbs; till time at leisure brings 
The thighs they wanted, and their tardy wings. 
Tis time my hard-mouth’d coursers to control, 
Apt to run riot, and transgress the goal: 
And therefore I conclude, wdiatever lies, 
In earth, or flits in air, or fills the skies, 
All suffer change; and we, that are of soul 
And body mix’d, are members of the whole. 
That when our sires, or grandsires, shall forsake 
'The forms of men, and other figures take. 
Thus hous’d, securely let their spirits rest, 
Nor violate thy father in the beast, 
Thy friend, thy brother, any of thy kin, 
If none of these, yet there’s a man within: 
O spare to make a Thyestcean meal, 
T* inclose his body, and his soul expel. 
Ill customs by degrees to habits rise, 
Ill habits soon become exalted vice: 
What more advance can mortals make in sin 
So near perfection, who with blood begin? 
Deaf to the calf, that lies beneath the knife, 
Looks up, and from her butcher begs her life: 
Deaf to the harmless kid, that ere he dies 
All methods to procure thy mercy tries, 
And imitates in vain thy children’s cries. 
Where will he stop, who feeds with household bread. 
Then eats the poultry, which before he fed? 
Let plough thy steers; that when they lose their breath, 
To nature, not to thee, they may impute their death. 
Let goats for food their loaded udders lend, 
And sheep from winter cold thy sides defend; 
But neither sprindges, nets, nor snares, employ, 
And be no more ingenious to destroy. 
Free as in air, let birds on earth remain, 
Nor let insidious glue their wings constrain; 
Nor opening hounds the trembling stag affright, 
Nor purple feathers intercept his flight: 
Nor hooks conceal’d in baits for fish prepare, 
Nor lines to heave ’em twinkling up in air. 
