Medicus-magus, : a poem, in three cantos; with a glossary. / by Richard Furness.

  • Richard Furness
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medicus-magus, : a poem, in three cantos; with a glossary. / by Richard Furness. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/80 (page 12)
    Sweet-briar y,nci woodbine overhung the place, And bloom’d inverted in its glassy face : Spar, pebbles, crystal, glitter'd in the wave, Whence dancing sunbeams play’d along the cave ; There Luna dipp’d her silver limb by night, And Vesper kiss’d the fount and blest the light: Rocks, trees, and shrubs, glow’d in the mirror pure, And heav’n’s blue, starry cope in miniature. Stalagmii* graced the’ encrusted marble roof. Where Idmion’s daughter]' spun her silver woof; And artless nature with immortal skill, Traced life and beauty with her magic quill ; From latent lembics pour’d her petrid stores, In all the alchymy of gems and ores ; With summer, gave her blossoms to the stone ; With spring her shrubs, plants, mosses, wild, un- known, Strew’d from her hand a winter’s frost around. Of pearly hail, and snow, on purple ground : Form’d here a prism, and here a crystal cone, There bees impendent, round a hive of stone ; Placed in the fissures, shell-fish, reptiles, worms, And serpents twisted in a thousand forms ; Above, below, in rich disorder threw, Jacinth, rock-diamond, crystal, sapphires blue— * Various natural formations which hang from the roofs of limestone caverns, produced by the petrifying quality of the water, which drops from the fissures and other apertures of the rocks. f Arachne was the daughter of Idmion, a Lydian, very skilful in spinning and weaving: she was by Minerva turned into a spider. A large spider of a very beautiful kind is often found in the roofs and fissures of the Derby- shire caverns.