47 
SECT. XI. 
YI. THE CONNEXION OF AIR WITH VEGETATION. 
Go, gentle Gnomes! resume your vernal toil. 
Seek my chill tribes, which sleep beneath the soil; 
Oh, watch, where bosom’d in the teeming earth* 
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 obdurat clay, 
And bring my vegetable babes to day!— 
See, from bright regions, borne on odorous gales. 
The swallow, herald of the summer, sails; 
Thou, whose soft voice calls forth the tender blooms* 
Whose pencil paints them, and whose breath perfumes; 
O chase the Fiend of Frost, with leaden mace. 
Who seals in death-like sleep my hapless race; 
Melt his hard heart, release his iron hand. 
And give my seeds the power to expand. 
Pervade the city dank, and heaving earths, 
Where teeming Nature broods her myriad births; 
Fill the fine lungs of all that breathe or bud, 
Warm the new heart, and dye the gushing blood, 
With life’s first spark inspire the organic frame, 
And, as it wastes, renew the subtle flame. 
Darwin. 
It is the Goddess who presides over Botany who is here supposed to address her attendant 
Gnomes, Sylphs, and Zephyrs. Her several addresses form the first part of the Botanic Garden, a 
poem which was intended to enlist the imagination under the banners of science, and to lead her vo¬ 
taries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter ones which form 
the reasonings of philosophy. The Goddess is thus invoked by the sublime Poet. 
Winds of the North! restrain your icy gales. 
Nor chill the bosom of these happy vales! 
Hither, emerging from yon orient skies, 
Botanic Goddess! bend thy radiant eyes; 
O’er these soft scenes assume thy gentle reign, 
Pomojia, Ceres, Flora, in thy train; 
O’er the still dawn thy placid smile effuse. 
And with thy silver sandals print the dews; 
In noon’s bright blaze thy vermil vest unfold. 
And wave thy emerald banner star’d with gold. 
