336 FLORA DOMESTICA. 



Metton le tronche cime 



Le pingui stilli dell' umor natio, 



Che portar, mal gustato, a i vivi ponno, 



La ferrea notte e il sempiterno obblio j 



E ben temprate, in placidi riposi 



Puon ricrear le affaticate menti, 



Frenando i procellosi 



Spirit! impazienti." 



FRUGONI. 



" There they put the swelling tops 

 Of poppy, that towards its bed, 

 Hangs for sleep, a heavy head. 

 They cut the moisture ; and there drop s 

 Richly, through the balmy air, 

 Balm that gods have made for care. 

 Dangerous to a daring lip 

 Is the balm, and fierce with sleep ; 

 Fierce with what should calmly bless, 

 And mortal in forgetfulness : 

 But, tempered well and wisely tasted, 

 It warms the bosom that lay wasted ; 

 Smoothes pain, and labour, and disease, 

 And sheds a magic oil on passion's stormy seas." 



The author of the Confessions of an English Opium- 

 Eater has so impressively portrayed the fascinations and 

 the terrors of this treacherous drug, and his work has been 

 so popular, that it is unnecessary to enlarge upon the 

 subject here. The reader who takes an interest in it, 

 either will have read, or will choose to read, the book itself. 



In Batavia opium is added to tobacco in smoking : a true 

 Dutch improvement. 



The Poppy is noted chiefly for its power of inducing 

 sleep, which all the kinds are supposed to possess in some 

 degree. 



Thus Virgil, in his Georgics, calls it the Lethaean Poppy, 

 directing it to be offered by way of funeral rite to Orpheus. 

 Mr. Davidson tells us, in a note to his translation, that 



