Inlays the broider’d weft with flowery dyes,
70 Quick beat the reeds, the pedals fall and rise;
        Slow from the beam the lengths of warp unwind,
        And dance and nod the massy weights behind.—­
        Taught by her labours, from the fertile soil
        Immortal Isis clothed the banks of Nile;
75 And fair ARACHNE with her rival loom
        Found undeserved a melancholy doom.—­
        Five Sister-nymphs with dewy fingers twine
        The beamy flax, and stretch the fibre-line;
        Quick eddying threads from rapid spindles reel,
80 Or whirl with beaten foot the dizzy wheel. 
        —­Charm’d round the busy Fair five shepherds press,
        Praise the nice texture of their snowy dress,
        Admire the Artists, and the art approve,
        And tell with honey’d words the tale of love.

85 So now, where Derwent rolls his dusky floods
        Through vaulted mountains, and a night of woods,
        The Nymph, GOSSYPIA, treads the velvet sod,
        And warms with rosy smiles the watery God;
        His ponderous oars to slender spindles turns,
90 And pours o’er massy wheels his foamy urns;
        With playful charms her hoary lover wins,
        And wields his trident,—­while the Monarch spins. 
        —­First with nice eye emerging Naiads cull
        From leathery pods the vegetable wool;

[Gossypia. l. 87.  Gossypium.  The cotton plant.  On the river Derwent near Matlock in Derbyshire, Sir RICHARD ARKWRIGHT has created his curious and magnificent machinery for spinning cotton; which had been in vain attempted by many ingenious artists before him.  The cotton-wool is first picked from the pods and seeds by women.  It is then carded by cylindrical cards, which move against each other, with different velocities.  It is taken from these by an iron-hand or comb, which has a motion similar to that of scratching, and takes the wool off the cards longitudinally in respect to the fibres or staple, producing a continued line loosely cohering, called the Rove or Roving.  This Rove, yet very loosely twisted, is then received or drawn into a whirling canister, and is rolled by the centrifugal force in spiral lines within it; being yet too tender for the spindle.  It is then passed between two pairs of rollers; the second pair moving faster than the first elongate the thread with greater equality than can be done by the hand; and is then twisted on spoles or bobbins.