The Vegetable world to guide,
And o'er all Botany preside:
To see that every dewy morn
Successive plants the earth adorn :
That flowers through every month be found,
Constant to keep their gaudy round:
That flowers, in spite of frost and snow,
Throughout our year, perpetual blow ;_/39
That trees, in spite of winds, are seen
Array'd in everlasting green.
Nor with a care beneath thy skill
Dost thou that vast employment fill.
Hail, Horticulture's sapient King
Receive the homage that we bring:
While at thy feet, with reverence low,
All Botanists and Florists bow;
Their knowledge, practice, all resign,
Short, infinitely short, of thine.
For thou 'rt not satisfied to know
The plants that in three nations blow,
Their names, their seasons, native place;
Their culture, qualities, and race;
Or Europe's more extended plains;
Sylvanus', Flora's wide domains:
Whate'er in Africk, Asia, shoots
From seeds, from layers, grafts, or roots;
At both the Indies, both the Poles,
Whate'er the sea or ocean rolls; 150
Of the botanic, herbal kind,
Lies open to thy searching mind.
Noblest ambition of thy soul!
Which limits but in vain control.
Let others, meanly satisfy'd
With partial knowledge sooth their pride:
While thou, with thy prodigious store,
But shew'st thy modesty the more.
From thee the Gods no knowledge hide,
No knowledge have to thee deny'd:
The rural Gods of hills or plains,
Where Faunus, or Favonia reigns.
Then tell us, as thou best dost know,
Where perfect happiness does grow.
What herbs or bodies will sustain
Secure from sickness, and from pain:
What plants protect us from the rage
Of blighting Time, or blasting Age;
Which shrubs, of all the flowery field,
Most aromatic odors yield.
Shew us the trees by Nature spread, To form the coolest noon-tide shade;
When our first ancestors were seen,
Out-stretch'd upon the grassy green :
Nor any food or covering sought,
But what from trees and woods they got:
Who, after various ages spent
In ease, abundance, and content,
Knew not what wars, or sickness meant ;
But, chearful, when the Fates requir'd,
Quick to th' Elysian fields retir'd,
Recount the precepts they observ'd; How from their rules they never swerv'd Such as Alcinous of old
To his beloved Phaeaceans told;
Or those Apollo first did teach
His son, the Epidaurian leech,
Long ere the Romans us'd to dine 190
Beneath their planes manur'd with wine
On Tyrian couches, thoughtless lay,
And drank, and laugh'd, and kiss'd away
Each sultry, circling, Summer's day:
On polish'd ivory beds reclin'd,
Flung care and sorrow to the wind:
And, scorning Nature's temperate rules,
Like madmen liv'd, and dy'd like fools:
Teach us, thou learn'd judicious Sage, The manners of a wiser age!
To thee was given by Jove to keep
Those grottoes where the Muses sleep:
To plant their forests where they sing,
Fast by the cool Castalian spring:
With myrtles their pavilions raise ;
Soft, intermix'd with Delian bays:
And when, they wake at earliest day,
To strew with sweetest flowers their way,
Transcendent honor! here below,
The Muses and their haunts to know!
Anna look down on Isis' towers;
Be gracious to the Muses' bowers:
And, now thy toils of war are done;
Anna! protect Apollo's throne:
'Twas he the dart unerring threw ;
Python the snaky monster slew.
The Muses' bowers, by all admir'd,
But those Fanatic rage has fir'd,
Or Atheist fools, who freedom boast,
Themselves to slavery fetter'd most.
Stern Mars, may thunder, Momus rail
But Wisdom's goodness will prevail.
On Isis' banks, retirement sweet!
Tritonian Pallas holds her seat.
Minerva's gardens are thy care; Bobart! the Virgin-power revere ;
Thy hoary head with vervain bound,
The mystic grove thrice compass round;
The waters of lustration pour,
And thrice the winding walks explore: 230
Lest some presumptuous wretch intrude,
With impious steel to wound the wood;
Or, with rash arm, prophanely dare
To shake the trees, the leaves to bare,
And violate their sacred hair:
Or, by worse sacrilege betray'd,
The blossoms, fruits, or flowers, invade.
Ye strangers! guard your heedless feet, Lest from the herbs their dews ye beat: ☛ Cosmetic dews, by virgins fair,
Exhal'd in May with early care,
Will to their eyes fresh lustre give,
And make their charms for ever live.
Minerva's gardens are thy care;
Jacob, the Goddess-maid revere.
All plants which Europe's fields contain,
For health, for pleasure, or for pain,
From the tall cedar that does rise
With conic pride, and mates the skies;
Down to the humblest shrub that crawls 25
On earth, or just ascends our walls,
Her squares of Horticulture yield:
By Danby planted, Bobart till'd.
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