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.

_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,