--So, warm and buoyant in his oily mail,
Gambols on seas of ice the unwieldy Whale;
Wide-waving fins round floating islands urge
His bulk gigantic through the troubled surge;
295 With hideous yawn the flying shoals He seeks,
Or clasps with fringe of horn his massy cheeks;
Lifts o'er the tossing wave his nostrils bare,
And spouts pellucid columns into air;
The silvery arches catch the setting beams,
300 And transient rainbows tremble o'er the streams.

Weak with nice sense, the chaste MIMOSA stands,
From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands;
Oft as light clouds o'er-pass the Summer-glade,
Alarm'd she trembles at the moving shade;
305 And feels, alive through all her tender form,
The whisper'd murmurs of the gathering storm;
Shuts her sweet eye-lids to approaching night;
And hails with freshen'd charms the rising light.


[_Mimosa_. I. 301. The sensitive plant. Of the class Polygamy, one house.
Naturalists have not explained the immediate cause of the collapsing of
the sensitive plant; the leaves meet and close in the night during the
sleep of the plant, or when exposed to much cold in the day-time, in the
same manner as when they are affected by external violence, folding their
upper surfaces together, and in part over each other like scales or
tiles; so as to expose as little of the upper surface as may be to the
air; but do not indeed collapse quite so far, since I have found, when