n silence the enchanted plains;
Drop the still tear, or breathe the impassion'd sigh,
And drink inebriate rapture from thine eye.
Thus, when old Needwood's hoary scenes the Night
Paints with blue shadow, and with milky light;
35 Where MUNDY pour'd, the listening nymphs among,
Loud to the echoing vales his parting song;
With measured step the Fairy Sovereign treads,
Shakes her high plume, and glitters o'er the meads;
Round each green holly leads her sportive train,
40 And little footsteps mark the circled plain;
Each haunted rill with silver voices rings,
And Night's sweet bird in livelier accents sings.

Ere the bright star, which leads the morning sky,
Hangs o'er the blushing east his diamond eye,
45 The chaste TROPAEO leaves her secret bed;
A saint-like glory trembles round her head;

[_ Where Mundy._ l. 35. Alluding to an unpublished poem by F. N. Mundy,
Esq. on his leaving Needwood-Forest.

_Tropaeolum._ l. 45. Majus. Garden Nasturtion, or greater Indian cress.
Eight males, one female. Miss E. C. Linneus first observed the Tropaeolum
Majus to emit sparks or flashes in the mornings before sun-rise, during
the months of June or July, and also during the twilight in the evening,
but not after total darkness came on; these singular scintillations were
shewn to her father and other philosophers; and Mr. Wilcke, a celebrated
electrician, believed them to be electric. Lin. Spec. Plantar. p. 490.
Swedish Acts for the year 1762. Pulteney's View of Linneus, p. 220. Nor
is this more wonderful than that the electric eel and torpedo should give
voluntary shocks of electricity; and in this plant perhaps, as in those
animals, it may be a mode of defence, by which it harrasses or destroys
the night-flying insects which infest it; and probably it may emit the same
sparks during the day, which must be then invisible. This curious subject
deserves further investigation. See Dictamnus. The ceasing to shine of
this plant after twilight might induce one to conceive, that it
absorbed and emitted light, like the Bolognian Phosphorus, or calcined
oyster-shells, so well explained by Mr. B. Wilson, and by T. B. Beccari.
Exper. on Phosphori, by B. Wilson. Dodsley. The light of the evening,
at the same distance from noon, is much greater, as I have repeatedly
observed, than the light of the morning: this is owing, I suppose, to