The sugar-cane: a poem in four books with notes / [James Grainger].

  • James Grainger
Date:
1766
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sugar-cane: a poem in four books with notes / [James Grainger]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    To bathe by night thy {prouts in genial balm ; The green-{tol’d Naiad of the tinkling rill, Whofe brow the fern-tree fhades; the power of ‘Tain To glad the thirfty foil on which, arrang’d, The gemmy fummits of the Cane await 395 Thy Negroe-train, (in linen lightly wrapt,) Who now that painted Iris girds the fky. (Aerial arch, which fancy loves to ftride !) Difperfe, all-jocund, o’er the long-hoed land. Tue bundles fome untie; the withered leaves, 400 Others ftrip artful off, and careful lay, Twice one junk, diftant in the ampleft bed: O’er thefe, with hafty hoe, fome lightly fpread The mounded interval ; and fmooth the trench = Well-pleas’d, the mafter-fwain reviews their toil; And rolls, in fancy, many a full-fraught cafk. 406 So, when the fhield was forg’d for Peleus’ fon ; The {warthy Cyclops fhar’d the important tafk: With bellows, fome reviv’d the feeds of fire; Some, gold, and brafs, and fteel together fus’d 410 In the vaft furnace; while a chofen few, Ver. 393. Whofe brow the fern-tree] This only grows in mountainous fituations. Its ftem fhoots up to a confiderable height, but it does not divide into branches, till near the fummit, where it fhoots out horizontally, like an umbrella, into leaves, which refemble thofe of the common fern. I know of no me- dical ufes, whereto this fingularly.beautiful tree has been applied, and indeed its wood, being fpongy, 1s feldom ufed to ceconomical urpofés. It, however, ferves well enough for building mountain- uts, and temporary fences for cattle, way, Diote waa a In on iF
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