And spreads to Heaven, in vain, her glassy hands;
Cold dews condense upon her pearly breast,
And the big tear rolls lucid down her vest.
Far gleaming o'er the town transparent fanes
140 Rear their white towers, and wave their golden vanes;
Long lines of lustres pour their trembling rays,
And the bright vault returns the mingled blaze.

2. "HENCE orient NITRE owes it's sparkling birth,
And with prismatic crystals gems the earth,
145 O'er tottering domes in filmy foliage crawls,
Or frosts with branching plumes the mouldering walls.
As woos Azotic Gas the virgin Air,
And veils in crimson clouds the yielding Fair,
Indignant Fire the treacherous courtship flies,
150 Waves his light wing, and mingles with the skies.


[_Hence orient Nitre_. l. 143. Nitre is found in Bengal naturally
crystallized, and is swept by brooms from earths and stones, and thence
called sweepings of nitre. It has lately been found in large quantities
in a natural bason of calcareous earth at Molfetta in Italy, both in
thin strata between the calcareous beds, and in efflorescences of
various beautiful leafy and hairy forms. An account of this nitre-bed is
given by Mr. Zimmerman and abridged in Rozier's Journal de Physique
Fevrier. 1790. This acid appears to be produced in all situations where
animal and vegetable matters are compleatly decomposed, and which are
exposed to the action of the air as on the walls of stables, and
slaughter-houses; the crystals are prisms furrowed by longitudinal
groves.