Oaks, whose broad antlers crest Britannia's plain,
Or bear her thunders o'er the conquer'd main,
Shout, as you pass, inhale the genial skies,
480 And bask and brighten in your beamy eyes;
Bow their white heads, admire the changing clime,
Shake from their candied trunks the tinkling rime;
With bursting buds their wrinkled barks adorn,
And wed the timorous floret to her thorn;
485 Deep strike their roots, their lengthening tops revive,
And all my world of foliage wave, alive.

"Thus with Hermetic art the ADEPT combines
The royal acid with cobaltic mines;
Marks with quick pen, in lines unseen portrayed,
490 The blushing mead, green dell, and dusky glade;
Shades with pellucid clouds the tintless field,
And all the future Group exists conceal'd;
Till waked by fire the dawning tablet glows,
Green springs the herb, the purple floret blows,
495 Hills vales and woods in bright succession rise,
And all the living landscape charms his eyes.


[_Thus with Hermetic art_. l. 487. The sympathetic inks made by Zaffre
dissolved in the marine and nitrous acids have this curious property,
that being brought to the fire one of them becomes green, and the other
red; but what is more wonderful, they again lose these colours, (unless
the heat has been too great,) on their being again withdrawn from the
fire. Fire-screens have been thus painted, which in the cold have shewn
only the trunk and branches of a dead tree, and sandy hills, which on