gth and
perfection; see Additional Note VII.]

"But REPRODUCTION with ethereal fires
New Life rekindles, ere the first expires;
Calls up renascent Youth, ere tottering age
Quits the dull scene, and gives him to the stage;
Bids on his cheek the rose of beauty blow,
And binds the wreaths of pleasure round his brow;
With finer links the vital chain extends,
And the long line of Being never ends. 20

[Footnote: _But Reproduction_, l. 13. See Additional Note
VIII.]

"Self-moving Engines by unbending springs
May walk on earth, or flap their mimic wings;
In tubes of glass mercurial columns rise,
Or sink, obedient to the incumbent skies;
Or, as they touch the figured scale, repeat
The nice gradations of circumfluent heat.
But REPRODUCTION, when the perfect Elf
Forms from fine glands another like itself,
Gives the true character of life and sense,
And parts the organic from the chemic Ens.-- 30
Where milder skies protect the nascent brood,
And earth's warm bosom yields salubrious food;
Each new Descendant with superior powers
Of sense and motion speeds the transient hours;
Braves every season, tenants every clime,
And Nature rises on the wings of Time.

[Footnote: _Unbending springs_, l. 21. See Additional Note I.
4.]

"As LIFE discordant elements arrests,
Rejects the noxious, and the pure digests;
Combines with Heat the fluctuating mass,
And gives a while solidity to gas; 40
Organic forms with chemic changes strive,
Live but to die, and die but to revive!
Immortal matter braves the transient storm,
Mounts from the wreck, unchanging but in form.--

[Footnote: _Combines with Heat_, l. 39. It was shown in note
on line 248 of the first Canto, that much of the aerial and
liquid parts of the terraqueous globe was converted by the
powers of life into solid matter; and that this was effected
by the combination of the fluid, heat, with other elementary
bodies by the appetencies and propensities of the parts of
living matter to unite with each other. But when these
appetencies and propensities of the parts of organic matter
to unite with each other cease, the chemical affinities of
attraction and the aptitude to be attracted, and of repulsion