'Tis hard to tell: I have heard those more skill'd in spirits say, The bubbles, which th' enchantment of the sun Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, Are the pavilions where such dwell and float Under the green and golden atmosphere Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves; And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, The which they breathed within those lucent domes, Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, They ride in them, and rein their headlong speed, And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire Under the waters of the earth again." Here again, in my third extract, we have poetry which is as strong as the other is dainty, and which is as modern as geology. Asia is describing a vision in which the successive deposits in the crust of the earth are revealed to her. The whole treatment is detailed, modern, vivid, powerful. "... The beams flash on And make appear the melancholy ruins Of cancell'd cycles: anchors, beaks of ships; Planks turn'd to marble; quivers, helms, and spears; And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, Round which death laugh'd, sepulchred emblems Of dread destruction, ruin within ruin! Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works and uncouth skeletons, Their statues, domes, and fanes, prodigious shapes Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jamm'd in the hard, black deep; and over these The anatomies of unknown winged things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony chains, twisted around The iron crags, or within heaps of dust To which the torturous strength of their last pangs Had crushed the iron crags; and over these The jagged alligator, and the might Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, And weed-overgrown continents of earth, Increased and multiplied like summer worms On an abandoned corpse till the blue globe Wrapt deluge round it like a cloak, and they Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God, Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried Be not! And like my words they were no more."