Again the Goddess strikes the golden lyre,
        And tunes to wilder notes the warbling wire;
        With soft suspended step Attention moves,
        And Silence hovers o’er the listening groves;
5 Orb within orb the charmed audience throng,
        And the green vault reverberates the song. 
        “Breathe soft, ye Gales!” the fair CARLINA cries,
        Bear on broad wings your Votress to the skies. 
        How sweetly mutable yon orient hues,
10 As Morn’s fair hand her opening roses strews;
        How bright, when Iris blending many a ray
        Binds in embroider’d wreath the brow of Day;
        Soft, when the pendant Moon with lustres pale
        O’er heaven’s blue arch unfurls her milky veil;
15 While from the north long threads of silver light
        Dart on swift shuttles o’er the tissued night!

[Carlina. l. 7.  Carline Thistle.  Of the class Confederate Males.  The seeds of this and of many other plants of the same class are furnished with a plume, by which admirable mechanism they perform long aerial journeys, crossing lakes and deserts, and are thus disseminated far from the original plant, and have much the appearance of a Shuttlecock as they fly.  The wings are of different construction, some being like a divergent tuft of hairs, others are branched like feathers, some are elevated from the crown of the seed by a slender foot-stalk, which gives, than a very elegant appearance, others sit immediately on the crown of the seed.

Nature has many other curious vegetable contrivances for the dispersion of seeds:  see note on Helianthus.  But perhaps none of them has more the appearance of design than the admirable apparatus of Tillandsia for this purpose.  This plant grows on the branches of trees, like the misleto, and never on the ground; the seeds are furnished with many long threads on their crowns; which, as they are driven forwards by the winds, wrap round the arms of trees, and thus hold them fast till they vegetate.  This it very analogous to the migration of Spiders on the gossamer, who are said to attach themselves to the end of a long thread, and rise thus to the tops of trees or buildings, as the accidental breezes carry them.]

        “Breathe soft, ye Zephyrs! hear my fervent sighs,
        Bear on broad wings your Votress to the skies!”—­
        —­Plume over plume in long divergent lines
20 On whale-bone ribs the fair Mechanic joins;
        Inlays with eider down the silken strings,
        And weaves in wide expanse Daedalian wings;
        Round her bold sons the waving pennons binds,
        And walks with angel-step upon the winds.