"There in her azure coif and starry stole, Grey TWILIGHT sits, and rules the slumbering Pole; 525 Bends the pale moon-beams round the sparkling coast, And strews with livid hands eternal frost. There, NYMPHS! alight, array your dazzling powers, With sudden march alarm the torpid Hours; On ice-built isles expand a thousand sails, 530 Hinge the strong helms, and catch the frozen gales; The winged rocks to feverish climates guide, Where fainting Zephyrs pant upon the tide; Pass, where to CEUTA CALPE'S thunder roars, And answering echoes shake the kindred shores; 535 Pass, where with palmy plumes CANARY smiles, And in her silver girdle binds her isles; Onward, where NIGER'S dusky Naiad laves A thousand kingdoms with prolific waves, Or leads o'er golden sands her threefold train 540 In steamy channels to the fervid main, While swarthy nations croud the sultry coast, Drink the fresh breeze, and hail the floating Frost, NYMPHS! veil'd in mist, the melting treasures steer, And cool with arctic snows the tropic year. 545 So from the burning Line by Monsoons driven Clouds sail in squadrons o'er the darken'd heaven; Wide wastes of sand the gelid gales pervade, And ocean cools beneath the moving shade. [_On ice-built isles_. l. 529. There are many reasons to believe from the accounts of travellers and navigators, that the islands of ice in the higher northern latitudes as well as the Glaciers on the Alps continue perpetually to increase in bulk. At certain times in the ice- mountains of Switzerland there happen cracks which have shewn the great thickness of the ice, as some of these cracks have measured three or four hundred ells deep. The great islands of ice in the northern seas near Hudson's bay have been observed to have been immersed above one hundred fathoms beneath the surface of the sea, and to have risen a fifth or sixth part above the surface, and to have measured between three and four miles in circumference. Phil. Trans. No. 465. Sect. 2. Dr. Lister endeavoured to shew that the ice of sea-water contains some salt and perhaps less air than common ice, and that it is therefore much more difficult of solution; whence he accounts for the perpetual and great increase of these floating islands of ice. Philos. Trans. No. 169.