X. "Go, gentle GNOMES! resume your vernal toil, Seek my chill tribes, which sleep beneath the soil; On grey-moss banks, green meads, or furrow'd lands 540 Spread the dark mould, white lime, and crumbling sands; Each bursting bud with healthier juices feed, Emerging scion, or awaken'd seed. So, in descending streams, the silver Chyle Streaks with white clouds the golden floods of bile; 545 Through each nice valve the mingling currents glide, Join their fine rills, and swell the sanguine tide; Each countless cell, and viewless fibre seek, Nerve the strong arm, and tinge the blushing cheek. "Oh, watch, where bosom'd in the teeming earth, 550 Green swells the germ, impatient for its birth; Guard from rapacious worms its tender shoots, And drive the mining beetle from its roots; With ceaseless efforts rend the obdurate clay, And give my vegetable babes to day! 555 --Thus when an Angel-form, in light array'd, Like HOWARD pierced the prison's noisome shade; Where chain'd to earth, with eyes to heaven upturn'd, The kneeling Saint in holy anguish mourn'd;-- Ray'd from his lucid vest, and halo'd brow 560 O'er the dark roof celestial lustres glow, "PETER, arise!" with cheering voice He calls, And sounds seraphic echo round the walls; Locks, bolts, and chains his potent touch obey, And pleased he leads the dazzled Sage to day. 565 XI. "YOU! whose fine fingers fill the organic cells, With virgin earth, of woods and bones and shells; Mould with retractile glue their spongy beds, And stretch and strengthen all their fibre-threads.-- Late when the mass obeys its changeful doom, 570 And sinks to earth, its cradle and its tomb, GNOMES! with nice eye the slow solution watch, With fostering hand the parting atoms catch, Join in new forms, combine with life and sense, And guide and guard the transmigrating Ens. [_Mould with retractile glue_. l. 567. The constituent parts of animal fibres are believed to be earth and gluten. These do not seperate except by long putrefaction or by fire. The earth then effervesces with acids, and can only be converted into glass by the greatest force of fire. The gluten has continued united with the earth of the bones above 2000 years in Egyptian mummies; but by long exposure to air or moisture it diffolves and leaves only the earth. Hence bones long buried, when exposed to the air, absorb moisture and crumble into powder. Phil. Trans. No. 475. The retractibility or elasticity of the animal fibre depends on the gluten; and of these fibres are composed the membranes muscles and bones. Haller. Physiol. Tom. I, p. 2.