Two Sister-Nymphs to Ganges’ flowery brink
230 Bend their light steps, the lucid water drink,
        Wind through the dewy rice, and nodding canes,
        (As eight black Eunuchs guard the sacred plains),
        With playful malice watch the scaly brood,
        And shower the inebriate berries on the flood.—­
235 Stay in your crystal chambers, silver tribes! 
        Turn your bright eyes, and shun the dangerous bribes;
        The tramel’d net with less destruction sweeps
        Your curling shallows, and your azure deeps;
        With less deceit, the gilded fly beneath,
240 Lurks the fell hook unseen,—­to taste is death!—­
        —­Dim your slow eyes, and dull your pearly coat,
        Drunk on the waves your languid forms shall float,

[Two Sister-Nymphs. l. 229.  Menispernum.  Cocculus.  Indian berry.  Two houses, twelve males.  In the female flower there are two styles and eight filaments without anthers on their summits; which are called by Linneus eunuchs.  See the note on Curcuma.  The berry intoxicates fish.  Saint Anthony of Padua, when the people refused to hear him, preached to the fish, and converted them.  Addison’s travels in Italy.]

        On useless fins in giddy circles play,
        And Herons and Otters seize you for their prey.—­

245 So, when the Saint from Padua’s graceless land
        In silent anguish sought the barren strand,
        High on the shatter’d beech sublime He stood,
        Still’d with his waving arm the babbling flood;
        “To Man’s dull ear,” He cry’d, “I call in vain,
        “Hear me, ye scaly tenants of the main!”—­
250 Misshapen Seals approach in circling flocks,
        In dusky mail the Tortoise climbs the rocks,
        Torpedoes, Sharks, Rays, Porpus, Dolphins, pour
        Their twinkling squadrons round the glittering shore;
255 With tangled fins, behind, huge Phocae glide,
        And Whales and Grampi swell the distant tide. 
        Then kneel’d the hoary Seer, to heaven address’d
        His fiery eyes, and smote his sounding breast;
        “Bless ye the Lord!” with thundering voice he cry’d,
260 “Bless ye the Lord!” the bending shores reply’d;
        The winds and waters caught the sacred word,
        And mingling echoes shouted “Bless the Lord!”
        The listening shoals the quick contagion feel,
        Pant on the floods, inebriate with their zeal,
265 Ope their wide jaws, and bow their slimy heads,
        And dash with frantic fins their foamy beds.

        Sopha’d on silk, amid her charm-built towers,
        Her meads of asphodel, and amaranth bowers,
        Where Sleep and Silence guard the soft abodes,
270 In sullen apathy PAPAVER nods. 
        Faint o’er her couch in scintillating streams
        Pass the thin forms of Fancy and of Dreams;
        Froze by inchantment on the velvet ground
        Fair youths and beauteous ladies glitter round;