FLORA.

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     MRS. TALBOT. What progress have you made, my Emily, in extracting from the books I selected for you such parts as I marked?

     EMILY. Oh, Mamma, not much—it was not indeed that I was at all disposed to be idle yesterday, during your absence; but after I had read over the names of all the heathen deities, and began some of the stories, I found so little pleasure in them, that I thought you would not insist on my going on. So I went to my drawing, to pass the rest of the morning.

     MRS. TALBOT. You know I never wish to punish you by making that a task, which I would ever have you find a pleasure.—It was to enable you to understand and be gratified, with many

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 poems and petical allusions, which must otherwise be incomprehensible, that I was desirous of your entering on a brief account of the Gods of the Pagans. However, you will acquire, as your reading becomes more extensive, as much knowledge as will be necessary for this purpose, without undertaking it as a task. I remember, that fairy tales which, when I was a girl, used highly to delight me, gave you no pleasure; when a year or two since, your friend, Miss Maybank, asked my permission to give you a set.—You was disgusted with the Royal Ram, and the Twllow Dwarf, and all the odd flights of imagination; indeed, I do not believe that, to the present time, you ever read one of them to the end.

     EMILY. I suppose it is because I have no fancy, no genius, Mamma, or perhaps it is, because I am stupid.

     MRS. TALBOT. I am willing rather to believe, my dear girl, that it arises from the purity of your natural taste, and

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 your perception of what is most beautiful, truth in its singleness and simplicity. In the present system of education, boys learn at school the heathen mythology; and Ovid, the most fanciful, and by no means the most proper among the Roman poets, for the perusal of youth, is almost the first book put into their hands. Your elder brother, therefore, became acquainted with all these fabulour people; ans as soon as Edward was in Virgil, he used to give me, while we looked over this lessons together, very clear accounts of their genealogy and exploits; but mingled with such remarks, as determined me to introduce these imaginary beings to George's acquaintance in another manner. You know, that the taste he has for poetry has induced me to give him many books, which boys at his age seldom desire to read, and if compelled to do it, seldom, and perhaps I may say never, understand. But he is delighted with the fictions of poetry; and has read

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 with enthusiasm, and a very uncommon relish for their beauties, poems, of which the machinery constitute a considerable part.—Now this could not have happened if he had not been a tolerable mythologist.

     EMILY. I don't quite understand what you mean, Mamma.

     MRS. TALBOT. I will endeavour to explain it to you. Homer is, as you have often heard, the greatest Epic Poet.—The Iliad is a poetical history of what happened in the last year of the Trojan war.—And the agents employed by the Poet, in bringing about the events, are heathen deities, who became themselves parties in the contest, which began, as the fable relates, from the gift of Paris, one of the sons of Priam, of a golden apple to Venus, in preference to Juno, the Queen of Heaven, and Minerva, the Goddess of Widsom and the Arts. The deities, thus interested, interfere in the war between the associated princes of Greece, and the

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 Trojans. Almost all of them are personally brought forward, and some are even described as being wounded. Now to understand the Iliad at all, it is necessary to learn all the fictions on which the story is founded, and from which these supernatural agents, or the machinery, are introduced. The Iliad describes the effects of the anger of Achilles, in retarding the success of the Grecian Princes against Troy. Achilles was the son of a Sea Goddess, Thetis, who knowing that he was destined to fall in early youth, endeavoured to conceal him, and prevent his joining the confederacy; but Ulysses, King of Ithaca, who is represented as the favourite of Minerva, and a man of great wisdom and sagacity, discovered him by a stratagem, disguised in women's cloaths; and in despite of his mother's apprehensions, induced him to assist in the siege, because destiny had decreed that Troy should not fall, unless he was among those who attacked it. I cannot, now, go

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 into all the preceding circumstances, but you see that they must be known, before the Iliad can be understood. The Odyssey of Homer, another Epic Poem, related the wanderings and sufferings of Ulysses, after the conquest of Troy.—Pursued by the hatred of the vindictive Juno, he was condemned to suffer innumerable hardships before he returned, after an absence of twenty years, to Penelope and his son Telemachus; whose adventures in search of his father, are the subject of the celebrated work of Fenelon; and Epic Poem, in measured French prose, which is usually, but improperly, one of the first books young people are directed to, after they begin to read French; it is impossible they can comprehend a page of it, if they do not know the heathen mythology, and the stories of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

     The next most celebrated Epic poem is Virgil's Eneid.—It relates the adventures of Eneas, the son of Venus and

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 Anchises, a Prince of Troy.—Eneas leading his little son Iulus, and bearing his old and decrepid father on his back, escapes from the flames of that devoted city, and after a great many perils and adventures, some of which do him very little credit, he lands in Italy, marries Lavinia, the daughter of Latinus; and from thence the Poet derives the descent of the Emperor, Augustus Caesar, in adulation of whom this poem was composed. To understand either of these, therefore, the deities of the ancients must be understood.

     Milton, the great Epic Poet of our own country, and who is classed for sublimity and vigour of imagination with the Grecian and Roman bards, chose a more simple, though more magnificent subject.—The creation of the world; the happiness enjoyed by the first pair in Paradise, till the fatal transgression of Eve—their exppulsion from thence, and the cvils entailed on their unhappy race in consequence of their disobedience. The machinery he

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 uses is more elevated, and comes more within our comprehension; yet throughout the book, there are frequent allusions to Grecian fable.

     But there is another species of poem, called usually the mock heroic; in which satire is conveyed under allegoric or imaginary beings, who bring about ludicrous events.—Some of these, which are not likely to interest you, I pass over.—But there are two which are so elegant, and so much adapted to form the taste of young women, that as soon as you are a little better read in fable, I shall recommend them to your study.—These are Pope's Rape of the Lock, and Hayley's Triumphs of Temper. The machinery used in the first of these is composed of ideal beings, called Sylphs and Gnomes. These are the invention of a philosopher, named Rosicrusius, who imagined that Sylphs and Gnomes presided over the air and earth, and Nymphs and Salamanders over water and fire. Mr. Hayley has

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 taken for the monitress and guardian of his sweet Serena a visionary sprite, called Sphyrosyne, whom the Genius of the Evening Star calls from her residence in the Moon, to attend on, and guard by dreams, this lovely favourite. Sophrosyne, who is described with great delicacy and elegance, is one of the Rosicrusian family.

     Of this enchanting system of air-drawn creatures, Shakespeare had never heard when he created his exquisite Ariel—but Shakespeare was a Poet, or Creator indeed; and the wildest and most delicious visionary scenes and beings, arose in the same comprehensive mind, that read, as by intuition, the effects of all the passions and feelings of the human heart. To return, however, to our Sylphs and Gnomes—these you remember, though you have only heard detached parts of it read, are employed with the Nymphs, as the agents, or the machinery in the Botanic Garden; a work which you know your brothers

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 have often read parts of to me; the splendour and beauty of the verse makes it delightful to George, who has an admirable ear for poetry; while Edward has been attrached by the variety of information conveyed in the notes; and became interested in experiments and facts, which probably would not, if offered to him in any other way, have excited his curiosity.—I observed, however, that neither your sister, who does not seem particularly gratified by poetry, or you, who confess your preference of such subjects of natural history as you can understand, were neither of you so much charmed as I was, and as your brothers were, with this magnificent poem; though I attempted to explain some passages to you.

     EMILY. It is very true, Mamma; I liked to hear of the flowers, if I happened to know the names of those which were mentioned, but when they were changed, or as you bade me call it, metamorphosed into men and women, they gave me no

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 pleasure at all. For I felt myself quite bewildered.

     MRS. TALBOT. You will, hereafter, think differently.—You see that your brothers immediately entered into the intention of the author, when I told them that Ovid transformed his men and women into plants or animals, but that Dr. Darwin formed beings like men and women, from plants.

     EMILY. Yes, Mamma; and I have not forgotten that.—But it is plants and flowers I like, and not these ladies and their lovers.

     MRS. TALBOT. I have heard more profound critics than you are, Emily, make the same objection, or something nearly resembling it; but I am so desirous you should acquire a taste for these agreeable fictions, that I enlisted George in my service, while you were out on your visit to your young friends on Thursday evening; and we fancied we could dress to please you an ideal being, which I know you do

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 notcontemn as much as you do the generality of goddresses in those luckless books which you are determined not to read—I mean the goddess who presides over your beloved flower garden—Flora.

     EMILY. How, my dear Mamma?

     MRS. TALBOT. Why we imagine her, not in the splendours that surround her in the highly coloured description of Dr. Darwin; but simply clad, even in her own manufacture; and we have placed her in a car of leaves, for all those aerial personages must have cars, you know, wafted by Zephyrs to the earth; whose various flowers spring at her approach. We were very much amused by selecting the vestment of our Goddess; and the armour of her male attendants, and the ornaments of her maids of honour.

     EMILY. And that then was what George was so busy about yesterday, that he shortened our walk in the evening, and had borrowed I know not how many botanical books of Mr. Beechcroft. After-

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 wards he shut himself up near two hours, and then he went out, and brought home a great many sea-weeds.

     MRS. TALBOT. Yes, because you know vegetation, over which Flora may poetrically be said to preside, is extended even to the rocks and caverns under the sea, where great numbers of plants of the class cryptogamia grow, and are washed from thence in storms, which is the reason, that after rough weather, the shore often seems a bank of weeds. These sometimes adhere to shells, or small stones, or pieces of rock, and they have shapes and colours unlike the productions of the earth; but if you observe samphire, and other plants that grow near the sea, and are watered by its waves, or are within the immediate influence of sea vapours, you will see, that there is a gradual line of connection between them. George is gone to return some books we borrowed, and as soon as he comes home, we will put the concluding hand to our little cabinet picture of Flora. I imagine

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 that she and her attendants are all fairy beings, like the elfin Queen and her retinue, only upon a somewhat larger scale, such as Shakespeare describes; and I am the supposed seer of the vision, and invoke Fancy on the margin of that river, where my early years were past, and for which I still retain a great partiality.

     EMILY. The Thames, Mamma?

     MRS. TALBOT. No, one of his tributary streams, the Wey; which formed by several brooks, one of which rises in Hampshire, wanders in a clear broad current till it becomes navigable ato Godalming, and joins the Thames at Weybridge. It was on the banks of that river, Emily, I gathered the first flowers that every conveyed pleasure to my mind. I remember, even at this distance of time, the great ranunculus, which answers Thompson's descriptions; "The full ranunculus of glowing red;" others, yellow, clouded with crimson, green, and brown; and parrot tulips, and fine double stocks,

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 and wall flowers, which in their season a man of the village, who worked in the garden and about the house, used always to bring me on Sunday morning. I recollect the little garden behind my old nurse's cottage, who was retired to a neat little habitation to pass the remainder of her days; and I think I have never seen since such lovely full white lilies as were in a border under some pales, where she used to preserve her finest currants for me. The houses which formed the village are now pulled down, and were I to pass thro' it, I should see no likeness remaining of the place, still represented by a thousand minute circumstances to my memory. I suppose it is because their first years were passed in London, or some other great city, that so many people I meet with are totally insensible to the beauties of nature, the charms of an extensive prospect, or the sight and scents of plants.

     EMILY. You cannot imagine, Mamma, how the Miss Welthams stared at

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 me the other day, when I named some plants that were in a nosegay. "Lord," cried one of them, "what signifies what the name of this plant and that plant is?"—"What nonsense and affectation, my dear creature!" said another in an half whisper, "what an amazingly conceited little thing is this Emily Talbot! I am sure I should never know one flower from another if I was to live an hundred years, and I wonder what good it does?"—"O! 'tis the fashion, you know," cried a Miss, a counsin of theirs, in a drawling tone—"but if my existence depended upon it, I'm sure I could never make any thing of remembering these hard names. You must know, we have a distant relation that makes herself, Mamma says, quite absurd about such stuff; and once, when we were going down to my father's country-house, she desired the coachman to stop—only think, you know, to stop a coach and four in hand—Mamma's own carriage, quite separate from Papa's, is always a coach

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 and four in hand; but only think, you know, of her desiring it might stop, while she got out to gather, what Mamma said was nothing in the world but a nasty weed."

     MRS. TALBOT. I suppose you were much offended with this cousin of your acquaintance, the Miss Welthams; but you should remember that her chief aim was to inform you, that her father had a country-house, her mother a separate carriage, and that carriage a coach and four—in hand.

     EMILY. Yes, I dare say it was, for I never saw any person more proud, or fancying themselves of more consequence.

     MRS. TALBOT. And why should that make you angry, Emily? why should it make you feel any unpleasant sensations of dislike, towards this consequential and apparently happy girl? You do not enby her, I think, her father's villa or her family's carriages? These ladies that cry, "Lord, my dear creature," and "only

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 think, you know," do not, I hoipe, excite any other feeling, than an inclination to smile.

     EMILY. No, Mamma—I don't envy them; I am quite as happy as they are—perhaps happier, with all their parade; but tho' I don't envy them, I can't help disliking them.

     MRS. TALBOT. You will do wisely then to forbear frequenting often a society, where you meet with persons, who, while, as it seems, they have no power to afford you pleasure, excite sensations that are painful.—Dislike, and all those unpleasant feelings, are better avoided; they border too closely on the uneasiness inflicted by envy, and I would have you totally unacquainted with them.

     EMILY. But, Mamma, how can I help disliking people who are, as you yourself say, arrogant, and fond of showing their consequence. I remember you have often expressed how disagreeable they were to you.

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     MRS. TALBOT. I allow I have done so, so far as to laugh at their overbearing vanity; and I will besides tell you, that in the younger part of my life I used to be mightily discomposed, when I saw people give themselves what are called airs, who, as I had foolishly beeen taught, were inferior in family and consequence to myself, and had only to boast of suddenly acquired riches: but as I went on in the world, this very common circumstance ceased to make me antry.—I listened with equal indifference to some persons of very high blood, who contrived to let me know, that they waved their privilege of rank while condescending to associate with me; and the good substantial monied folks, who took some trouble to convey obliquely to me, what was always present to them, a consciousness of the superiority money, of which they had a great deal, gave them over me, who had in their estimation very little. I considered, that my pursuits and pleasures were totally inde-

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 pendent of high birth or high affluence; that the want either of the one or the other would never make me less alive to the charms of nature, or detract one atom of delight from the enjoyments of reading and writing. I considered that I had learned to live to my own heart, and to find my amusement where my duties lay, and that it would be very foolish to lose the one, and neglect the other, for the sake of vying with people whose happiness seemed so wide of mine, that we need not at all interfere with each other. If they sought me, I met them with civility, and parted from them with as little regret as they probably did with me; but I never sought htme, or gave them reason to imagine they could inflict pain on me by any display of the difference between their situation and mine.

     EMILY. Oh indeed, Mamma, I shall never desire to increase my acquaintance with the Miss Welthams, or their cousin. You know I did not desire to go the other

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 night, and had rather a thousand times have been at home, finishing my flower piece against my aunt see it.

     MRS. TALBOT. Do not, however, misunderstand me, Emily. While I say that it is wrong to put even yhour momentary satisfaction in the power of every one who can teize you with their fancied superiority, I do not mean to make you fastidious, or to let you fall into the affectation of fancying you can associate only with people, who are or pretent to be well instructed, or of superior education. Among many of these you will find a great deal of arrogance, in the younger circles at least; and sometimes an affectation of elevated endowments of acquirements, more disgusting than the glaring ostentation of vulgar wealth, or the supercilious consequence assumed by ancestal dignity. Perhaps you were a little too fond of showing what it is on which you value yourself, when you began to talk to these young ladies of the names of flowers, which to them pro-

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 bably seemed affected, and unintelligible jargon. Nothing offends more than pretence to knowledge, in a company which you know cannot possess it; and these girls will never forgive you for telling them that they should say "viola tricolar"; in stead of "Leap-up-and-kiss-me." or "three-faces-under-an-hood;" and your talking of Chrysanthemums, and Erigeroin, has given them occasion to laugh at you, as long as they remember the conversation.

     EMILY. Well, Mamma, they will never have another opportunity. And now I care very little about them, for here is George, and you will let me hear the Poem.

     MRS. TALBOT. My dear George, Emily is become impatient for our Elfin Flora. I have given her an idea of my plan in writing it, but perhaps you may afford her a farther explanation.

     GEORGE. Mother, that would spoil her pleasure, perhaps; besides, if it is

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 given to her first in prose, possibly she will not take the trouble to recollect the flowers that you have dressed Flora and her attendants in, when she reads the verse.

     MRS. TALBOT. I believe, Emily, your Brother is right. However, I will tell you, that all I mean is a playful description of a miniature goddess, and I have dressed her, with a little of George's help, who I assure you is an admirable assistant at a Sylphish toilet, in such plants, as by their names are appropriated to the wardrobe of such ideal beings, or are of a nature to be easily formed in Fancy's loom into robes and cymures, and scarfs. Some of these the structure of the verse compelled me to insert as they are scientifically called; others are designed by their common or vulgar names. The attendant nymphs, Floscella, Petalla, Nectarynia, and Calyxa, you will understand are names after the parts of flowers; I have drest them rather more gaily than their fair Mistress, and in flowers cultivated here, but

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 not natives of this country; while in Flora herself I have given an example of more pure taste, and of the great simple, which should be always attended to by beauty—that is said to be

     Now with all this pomp my fairy Goddess enters, to inspire you with something like a taste for these children of imagination; just as it was formerly the idea, that girls should be encouraged to understand dress by ornamenting their dolls. George, will you read it to us?

     GEORGE. Willingly—but not without regret, that this is the last Poem we have got to complete our collection.

     MRS. TALBOT. "Tho' last, not least." We shall want no more, when the friends are with us for whome we have so long waited, and of whom we have so long waited, and of whom we have still said, "they will come to-morrow," so that at last I fear to say it again. But now we shall have more to talk of, than if we had

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 met when we first expected it; and may perhaps, though we have experienced that "hope delayed makes the heart sick," find also, that "expectation makes a blessing dear." Well, George, are you ready?

     GEORGE. Yes, and I will endeavour to read in my best manner, my dear Mother, your

FLORA.

REMOTE from scences, where the o'erwearied mind
Shrinks from the crimes and follies of mankind,
From hostile menace, and offensive boast,
Peace, and her train of home-born pleasures lost;
To Fancy's reign, who would not gladly turn,
and lose awhile the miseries they mourn
In sweet oblivion?—Come then Fancy! deign,
Queen of ideal pleasure, once again
To lend thy magic pencil, and to bring
Such lovely forms, as in life's happier Spring
On the green margin of my native Wey,
Before mine infant eyes were want to play,
And with that pencil, teach me to describe
The enchanting Goddess of the flowery tribe,
Whose first prerogative it is to chase
The clouds that hang on languid beauty's face;

And

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And, while advancing Suns, and tepid showers,
Lead on the laughing Spring's delicious hours,
Bid the wan maid the hues of health assume,
Charm with new grace, and blish with fresher bloom.

         The vision comes!—While slowly melt away
Night's hovering shades before the eastern ray,
Ere yet declines the morning's humid star,
Fair Fancy brings her; in her leafy car
Flora descends, to dress the expecting earth,
Awake the germs, and call the buds of birth,
Bid each hybernacle its cell unfold,
And open silken leaves, and eyes of gold!

         Of forest foliage of the firmest shade
Enwoven by magic hands the Car was made,
Oak and the ample Plane, without entwin'd,
And beech and Afh the verdant concave lined;
The Saxifrage, that snowy flowers emboss,
Supplied the seat; and of the mural Moss
The velvet footstool rose, where lightly rest
Her slender feet in Cypripedium drest.
The tufted Rush that bears a silken crown,
In tender hues of rainbow lustre dyed,
The airy texture of her robe supplied;
and wild Convolvulas, yet half unblown,
Form'd with their wreathing buds her simple zone;
Some wandering treases of her radiant hair
Luxuriant floated ont he enamour'd air,

The

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The rest were by the Scandix's points confin'd,
And graced, a shining know, her hair behind—
While as a sceptre of supreme command,
She waved the Anthoxanthum in her hand.

         Around the Goddess, as the flies that play
In countless myriads in the western ray,
The Sylphs immumerour throng, whose magic powers
Guard the soft buds, and nurse the infant flowers,
Round the sustaining stems weak tendrils bind,
And save the Pollen from dispersing wind,
From Suns too ardent shade their translent hues,
And catch in odorous cups translucent dews.
The ruder tasks of others are, to chase
From vegetable life the Infect race,
Break the polluting thread the Spider weaves
And brush the Aphis from the unfolding leaves,

         For conquest arm'd the pigmy warriors wield
the throny lance, and spread the hollow shield
Of Lichen tough; or bear, as silver bright,
On the helm'd head the crimson Foxglove glows,
Or Scutellaria guards the martial brows,
While the Leontodon its plumage rears,
And o'er the casque in waving grace appears;
With stern undaunted eye, one warlike Chief
Grasps the tall club from Arum's blood-dropp'd leaf,
This with the Burdock's hooks annoys his foes,
The purple Thorn, that borrows from the Rose.

In

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In honeyed nectaries counched, some drive away
The forked insidious Earwig from his prey,
Fearless the scaled Libellula assail,
Dart their keen lances at the encroaching Snail,
Arrest the winged Ant, on pinions light,
And strike the headlong Beetle in his flight.

         Nor less assiduous round their lovely Queen,
The lighter forms of female Fays are seen;
Rich was the purple vest Floscella wore,
Spun of the tufts the Tradescantia bore,
The Cistus' flowers minute her temples graced,
And threads of Yucca bound her slender waist.

         From the wild Bee, whose wondrous labour weaves,
In artful folds the Rose's fragrant leaves,
Was borrow'd fair Petalia's light cymarre;
And the Hypericum, with spangling star,
O'er her fair locks its bloom minute enwreathed;
Then, while voluptuous odours round her breathed,
Came Nectarynia; as the arrowy rays
Of lambent fire round pictured Seraphs blaze,
So did the Passiflora's raddi shed
Cerulean glory o'er the Sylphid's head,
While round her form the pliant tendrils twined,
And clasp'd the scarf that floated on the wind.

         More grave, the para-nymph Calyxa drest;
A brown transparent spatha formed her veft.

The

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The silver scales that bound her raven hair,
Xeranthensum's unfading calyx bear;
And a light sash of spiral Ophrys press'd
Her filmy tunic, on her tender breast.

         But where shall images or words be found
To paint the fair ethereal forms, that round
The Queen of flowers attended? and the while
Basked in her eyes, and wanton'd in her smile.

         Now towards the earth the gay procession bends,
Lo! fromt he buoyant air, the Car descends;
Anticipating then the various year,
Flowers of all hues and every month appear,
From every swelling bulb its blossoms rise;
Here blow the Hyacinths of loveliest dyes,
Breathing of Heaven; and there her royal brows
Begemmed with pearl, the Crown Imperial shows;
Peeps the blue Gentian from the softning ground,
Jonquils and Violets shed their odours round;
High rears the Honeysuck his scallop'd horn;
A now of blossoms whiten on the Thorn.
Here, like the fatal fruit to Paris given,
That spread fell feuds throughout the fabled Heaven,
The yellow Rose her golden blobe displays;
There, lovelier still, among their spiny sprays
Her blushing Rivals glow with brighter dyes,
Than paints the Summer Sun, on western skies;
And the scarce ting'd, and paler Rose unveil
Their modest beauties to the fighing gale.

Thro'

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         Thro' the deep woodland's wild uncultured feens,
Spreads the soft influence of the floral Queen.
A beauteous pyramid, the Chesnut rears,
Its crimson tassels on the Larch appears;
The Fir, dark native of the sullen North,
Owns her soft away; and slowly springing forth
On the rough Oak are buds minute unfurl'd,
Whose giant produce may command the World!
Each forest thicket feels the balmy air,
And plants that love the shad are blowing there,
Rude rocks with Filices and Bryum smile,
And wastes are gay with Thyme and Chamomile.

         Ah! yet prolong the dear delivious dream,
And trace her power along the mountain stream.
See! from its rude and rocky source, o'erhung
With demale Fern, and glossy Addres-tongue,
Slowly it wells, in pure and crystal drops,
And steals soft gliding thro' the upland copse;
Then murmuring on, along the willowy sides,
The Reed-bird whispers, and the Halcyon hides;
While among Sallows pale, and birchen bowers,
Embarks in Fancy's eye the Queen of flowers—

         O'er her light skiff, of woven bull-rush made,
The water Lily lends a polish'd shade,
While Galium there of pale and silver hue,
And Epilobiums on the banks that grow,
Form her soft couch; and as the Sylphs divide,
With pliant arms, the still encreasing tide,

A thousand

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A thousand leaves along the stream unfold;
Amid its waving swords, in flaming gold
The Iris towers; and here the Arrowhead,
And water Crowfoot, more profusely spread,
Spangle the quiet current; highter there,
As conscious of her claims, in beauty rare,
Her rosy umbels rears the flow'ring Rush,
While with reflected charms the waters blush.

         The Naid now the Year's fair Goddess leads,
Thro' richer pastures, and more level meads,
Down to the Sea; where even the briny sands
Their product offer to her glowing hands;
For there, by Sea-dews nurs'd, and airs maxine,
The Chelidonium blows; in glaucous green,
Each refluent tide the thorn'd Eryngium laves,
And its pale leaves seem tinctured by the waves;
Hangs o'er the ever toiling Surge below,
Springs the light Tamarisk—The summit bare
Is tufted by the Statice; and there,
Crush'd by the fisher, as he stands to mark
The Saltwort'n starry stalks are thickly sown,
Like humble worth, unheeded and unknown!—

         From depths where Corals spring from crystal caves,
And break with scarlet branch the eddying waves,
Where Algæ stream, as change the flowing tides,
And where half flower, half fish, the Polyp hides,

And

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And long tenaceous bands of Sea-lace twine
Round palm-shaped leaves empearl'd with Coralline,
Enamour'd Fancy, now the Sea maids calls,
And from their grottos dim, and shelf-paved halls,
Charm'd by her voice, the shining train emerge,
And buoyant float above the circling surge,
Green Byssue, waving in the sea-born gales,
Form'd their thin mantles, and transparent veils,
Panier'd in shells, or bound with silver strings
Of silken Pinna, each her trophy brings
Of plants, from rocks and saverns sub-marine,
With leathery branch, and bladder'd buds between;
There its dark folds the packer'd Laver spread
With trees in miniature of various red;
There flag-shaped Oliver leaves depending hung,
And fairy fans from glossy pebbles sprung;
Then her terrestrial train the Nereids meet,
And lay their spoils saline at Flora's feet.

         O! fairest of the fabled forms that stream,
Dress'd by wild Fancy, thro' the Poet's dream,
Still may thy attributes, of leaves and flowers,
Thy gardens rich, and shrub-o'ershadow'd bowers,
And yellow meads, with Spring's first honors bright,
The child's gay heart, and frolic step invite;
And, while the careless wanderer explores
The umbrageous forest, or the rugged shores,
Climbs the green down, or roams the broom-clad waste,
May Truth and Nature form his future taste.
Goddess! on Youth's bless'd hours thy gifts bestow,

Bind

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Bind the fair wreath on Virgin Beauty's brow,
And still may Fancy's brightest flowers be wove
Round the gold chains of Hymeneal love;
But most for those, by Sorrow's hands oppress'd,
May thy beds blossom, and thy wilds be drest;
and where, by Fortune, and the World, forgot,
The Mourner droops in some sequester'd spot,
(" Sad luxury to vulgar minds unknown")
O'er blighted happiness, for ever gone,
Yet the dear image seeks not to forget,
But wooes his grief, and cherishes regret,
Loving, with fond and lingering pain, to mourn
O'er joys and hopes, that never will return,
Thou, visionary Power, may'st bid him view
Forms not less lovely—and as transient too,
And, while they sooth the wearied Pilgrim's eyes,
Afford an antepast of Paradise.