X. 1. "SYLPHS! as you hover on ethereal wing, Brood the green children of parturient Spring!-- Where in their bursting cells my Embryons rest, I charge you guard the vegetable nest; 355 Count with nice eye the myriad SEEDS, that swell Each vaulted womb of husk, or pod, or shell; Feed with sweet juices, clothe with downy hair, Or hang, inshrined, their little orbs in air. [_The myriad seeds_. l. 355. Nature would seem to have been wonderfully prodigal in the seeds of vegetables, and the spawn of fish; almost any one plant, if all its seeds should grow to maturity, would in a few years alone people the terrestrial globe. Mr. Ray asserts that 101 seeds of tobacco weighed only one grain, and that from one tobacco plant the seeds thus calculated amounted to 360,000! The seeds of the ferns are by him supposed to exceed a million on a leaf. As the works of nature are governed by general laws this exuberant reproduction prevents the accidental extinction of the species, at the same time that they serve for food for the higher orders of animation. Every seed possesses a reservoir of nutriment designed for the growth of the future plant, this consists of starch, mucilage, or oil, within the coat of the seed, or of sugar and subacid pulp in the fruits, which belongs to it. For the preservation of the immature seed nature has used many ingenious methods; some are wrapped in down, as the seeds of the rose, bean, and cotton-plant; others are suspended in a large air-vessel, as those of the bladder-sena, staphylaea, and pea.] "So, late descry'd by HERSCHEL'S piercing sight, 360 Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling Night; Ten thousand marshall'd stars, a silver zone, Effuse their blended lustres round her throne; Suns call to suns, in lucid clouds conspire, And light exterior skies with golden fire; 365 Resistless rolls the illimitable sphere, And one great circle forms the unmeasured year. --Roll on, YE STARS! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time; Near and more near your beamy cars approach, 370 And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach;-- Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield, Frail as your silken sisters of the field! Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush, 375 Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all! --Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, 380 And soars and shines, another and the same. [_And light exterior_. l. 364. I suspect this line is from Dwight's Conquest of Canaan, a poem written by a very young man, and which contains much fine versification.]