195 As yon gay clouds, which canopy the skies,
        Change their thin forms, and lose their lucid dyes;
        So the soft bloom of Beauty’s vernal charms
        Fades in our eyes, and withers in our arms. 
        —­Bright as the silvery plume, or pearly shell,
200 The snow-white rose, or lily’s virgin bell,
        The fair HELLEBORAS attractive shone,
        Warm’d every Sage, and every Shepherd won.—­
        Round the gay sisters press the enamour’d bands,
        And seek with soft solicitude their hands.
205 —­Ere while how chang’d!—­in dim suffusion lies
        The glance divine, that lighten’d in their eyes;

[Helleborus.  I. 201.  Many males, many females.  The Helleborus niger, or Christmas rose, has a large beautiful white flower, adorned with a circle of tubular two-lipp’d nectarics.  After impregnation the flower undergoes a remarkable change, the nectaries drop off, but the white corol remains, and gradually becomes quite green.  This curious metamorphose of the corol, when the nectaries fall off, seems to shew that the white juices of the corol were before carried to the nectaries, for the purpose of producing honey:  because when these nectaries fall off, no more of the white juice is secreted in the corol, but it becomes green, and degenerates into a calyx.  See note on Lonicera.  The nectary of the Tropaeolum, garden nasturtion, is a coloured horn growing from the calyx.]

        Cold are those lips, where smiles seductive hung,
        And the weak accents linger on their tongue;
        Each roseat feature fades to livid green,—­
210 —­Disgust with face averted shuts the scene.

        So from his gorgeous throne, which awed the world,
        The mighty Monarch of the east was hurl’d,
        To dwell with brutes beneath the midnight storm,
        By Heaven’s just vengeance changed in mind and form.
215 —­Prone to the earth He bends his brow superb,
        Crops the young floret and the bladed herb;
        Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side
        Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide. 
        Long eagle-plumes his arching neck invest,
220 Steal round his arms, and clasp his sharpen’d breast;
        Dark brinded hairs in bristling ranks, behind,
        Rise o’er his back, and rustle in the wind,
        Clothe his lank sides, his shrivel’d limbs surround,
        And human hands with talons print the ground.
225 Silent in shining troops the Courtier-throng
        Pursue their monarch as he crawls along;
        E’en Beauty pleads in vain with smiles and tears,
        Nor Flattery’s self can pierce his pendant ears.