JELLY-FISHES. 818 



To win applause — a thing of conscious sense, 

 Quivering and thrilling with delight intense. 

 Long silvery cords she treasures in her sides, 

 By which, uncoiled at times, she moors and rides j 

 From these, as hook-hairs on a fisher's line, 

 See feathery fibrils hang, in graceful twine, 

 Graceful as tendrils of the mantling vine ; 

 These, swift as angler by the fishy lake 

 Projects his fly, the keen-eyed trout to take, 

 She shoots with rapid jerk to seize her food, 

 The small green creatures of crustaceous brood : 

 Soon doomed herself a ruthless foe to find, 

 When in th' Actinia's arms she lies entwin'd. 

 Here prison'd by the vase's crystal bound, 

 Impassable as Styx's nine-fold round, 

 Quick she projects, as quick retracts again, 

 Her flexile toils, and tries her arts in vain ; 

 Till languid grown, her fine machinery worn 

 By rapid friction, and her fringes torn, 

 Her full round orb wanes lank, and swift decay 

 Pervades her frame till all dissolves away. 

 So wanes the dew, conglobed on rose's bud; 

 So melts the ice-drop in the tepid flood : 

 Thus, too, shall many a shining orb on high 

 That studs the broad pavilion of the sky, 

 Suns and their systems, fade, dissolve, and die." 



While we have been admiring our lovely little Oydippe, 

 and comparing notes with other observers and admirers ; 

 other species as small, as transparent, as sprightly, and 

 scarcely less elegant, have been impatiently waiting for 

 their share of admiration ;. shooting to and fro, tossing 

 about their little bells of ductile glass, and alternately 

 lengthening and snatching-in their sensitive tentacles, in 

 astonishment at our stoical indifference to their charms, 

 and saying, after their manner, with the little urchin whose 

 feelings were hurt by the neglect of his papa's visitor, — 

 " You don't notice how beautiful I be ! " 



A thousand pardons, sweet little Sarsia ! We will now 

 give you our undivided attention ; and for this end we 

 must take the liberty of catching you, and of transferring 

 your translucency to solitary grandeur in this other glass. 



