AND NOW THE GODDESS with attention sweet
Turns to the GNOMES, that circle round her feet;
Orb within orb approach the marshal'd trains,
And pigmy legions darken all the plains;
Thrice shout with silver tones the applauding bands,
Bow, ere She speaks, and clap their fairy hands.
So the tall grass, when noon-tide zephyr blows,
Bends it's green blades in undulating rows;
Wide o'er the fields the billowy tumult spreads,
And rustling harvests bow their golden heads.
I. "GNOMES! YOUR bright forms, presiding at her birth,
Clung in fond squadrons round the new-born EARTH;
When high in ether, with explosion dire,
From the deep craters of his realms of fire,
The whirling Sun this ponderous planet hurl'd,
And gave the astonish'd void another world.
When from it's vaporous air, condensed by cold,
Descending torrents into oceans roll'd;
And fierce attraction with relentless force
Bent the reluctant wanderer to it's course.
From the deep craters. l. 14. The existence of solar volcanos is
countenanced by their analogy to terrestrial, and lunar volcanos; and by
the spots on the sun's disk, which have been shewn by Dr. Wilson to be
excavations through its luminous surface, and may be supposed to be the
cavities from whence the planets and comets were ejected by explosions.
See additional notes, No. XV. on solar volcanos.
When from its vaporous air. l. 17. If the nucleus of the earth was
thrown out from the sun by an explosion along with as large a quantity
of surrounding hot vapour as its attraction would occasion to accompany
it, the ponderous semi-fluid nucleus would take a spherical form from
the attraction of its own parts, which would become an oblate spheroid
from its diurnal revolution. As the vapour cooled the water would be
precipitated, and an ocean would surround the spherical nucleus with a
superincumbent atmosphere. The nucleus of solar lava would likewise
become harder as it became cooler. To understand how the strata of the
earth were afterwards formed from the sediments of this circumfluent
ocean the reader is referred to an ingenious Treatise on the Theory of
the Earth by Mr. Whitehurst, who was many years a watch-maker and
engineer at Derby, but whose ingenuity, integrity, and humanity, were
rarely equalled in any station of life.
"Where yet the Bull with diamond-eye adorns
The Spring's fair forehead, and with golden horns;
Where yet the Lion climbs the ethereal plain,
And shakes the Summer from his radiant mane;
With paler lustres where Aquarius burns,
And showers the still snow from his hoary urns;
YOUR ardent troops pursued the flying sphere,
Circling the starry girdle of the year;
While sweet vicissitudes of day and clime
Mark'd the new annals of enascent Time.
II.
The Bull with diamond-eye adorns
The Spring's fair forehead, and with golden horns;
Where yet the Lion climbs the ethereal plain,
And shakes the Summer from his radiant mane;
Where Libra lifts her airy arm, and weighs,
Poised in her silver ballance, nights and days;
With paler lustres where Aquarius burns,
And showers the still snow from his hoary urns;
YOUR ardent troops pursued the flying sphere,
Circling the starry girdle of the year;
While sweet vicissitudes of day and clime
Mark'd the new annals of enascent Time.
II.