The Botanic Garden. Part 2, Containing the Loves of the Plants. A Poem.: With Philosophical Notes.Darwin, Erasmus
History
The Botanic Garden. Part 2, Containing the Loves of the Plants. A Poem.: With Philosophical Notes.
Darwin, Erasmus
Natural history; Plants -- Poetry
Arm'd with her ivory beak, and talon-hands,
80 Descending FICA dives into the sands;
Chamber'd in earth with cold oblivion lies;
Nor heeds, _ye Suitor-train_, your amorous sighs;
Erewhile with renovated beauty blooms,
Mounts into air, and moves her leafy plumes.
85 --Where HAMPS and MANIFOLD, their cliffs among,
Each in his flinty channel winds along;
With lucid lines the dusky Moor divides,
Hurrying to intermix their sister tides.
[When there arises in sleep a painful desire to exert the voluntary
motions, it is called the Nightmare or Incubus. When the sleep becomes so
imperfect that some muscular motions obey this exertion of desire, people
have walked about, and even performed some domestic offices in sleep;
one of these sleep-walkers I have frequently seen: once she smelt of a
tube-rose, and sung, and drank a dish of tea in this state; her awaking
was always attended with prodigious surprize, and even fear; this disease
had daily periods, and seemed to be of the epileptic kind.]
[_Ficus indica_. l. 80. Indian Fig-tree. Of the glass Polygamy. This large
tree rises with opposite branches on all sides, with long egged leaves;
each branch emits a slender flexile depending appendage from its summit
like a cord, which roots into the earth and rises again. Sloan. Hist. of
Jamaica. Lin. Spec. Plant. See Capri-ficus.]
Where still their silver-bosom'd Nymphs abhor,
90 The blood-smear'd mansion of gigantic THOR,--
--Erst, fires volcanic in the marble womb
Of cloud-wrapp'd WETTON raised the massy dome;
Rocks rear'd on rocks in huge disjointed piles
Form the tall turrets, and the lengthen'd ailes;
[_Gigantic Thor._ l. 90. Near the village of Wetton, a mile or two above
Dove-Dale, near Ashburn in Dirbyshire, there is a spacious cavern about
the middle of the ascent of the mountain, which still retains the Name of
Thor's house; below is an extensive and romantic common, where the rivers
Hamps and Manifold sink into the earth, and rise again in Ham gardens,
the seat of John Port, Esq. about three miles below. Where these rivers
rise again there are impressions resembling Fish, which appear to be of
Jasper bedded in Limestone. Calcareous Spars, Shells converted into a
kind of Agate, corallines in Marble, ores of Lead, Copper, and Zinc, and
many strata of Flint, or Chert, and of Toadstone, or Lava, abound in this
part of the country. The Druids are said to have offered human sacrifices
inclosed in wicker idols to Thor. Thursday had its name from this Deity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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