The Botanic Garden. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation

by Erasmus Darwin

Part I of the two-part poem. Includes philosophical notes.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 28, 2007

About the author

Erasmus Darwin was an English physiologist and poet. He was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. He practiced medicine most of his life. His chief poetic work was The Botanic Garden (1789 - 1792), a long poem, stilted in expression but showing enthusiasm for science and nature. His prose work Zoonomia (1794 - 1796) anticipated some of the evolutionary theories of the French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck but was intuitive and unscientific. Darwin was the grandfather of the British scientists Charles Darwin and Sir Francis Galton.

Reviews

[chloe]

what would you do if when you ok so he said yes would go--don't know what you mean there babes

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

ADVERTISEMENT.
The general design of the following sheets is to inlist Imagination under the banner of Science; and to lead her votaries from the looser analogies, which dress out the imagery of poetry, to the stricter, ones which form the ratiocination of philosophy. The Rosicrucian doctrine of Gnomes, Sylphs, Nymphs, and Salamanders, was thought to afford a proper machinery for a Botanic poem; as it is probable, that they were originally the names of hieroglyphic figures representing the elements. Many of the important operations of Nature were shadowed or allegorized in the heathen mythology.

But THOU! whose mind the well-attemper'd ray
Of Taste and Virtue lights with purer day;
Whose finer sense each soft vibration owns
With sweet responsive sympathy of tones;
So the fair flower expands it's lucid form
To meet the sun, and shuts it to the storm;—

For thee my borders nurse the fragrant wreath,
My fountains murmur, and my zephyrs breathe;
Slow slides the painted snail, the gilded fly
Smooths his fine down, to charm thy curious eye;
On twinkling fins my pearly nations play,

Or win with sinuous train their trackless way;
My plumy pairs in gay embroidery dress'd
Form with ingenious bill the pensile nest,
To Love's sweet notes attune the listening dell,
And Echo sounds her soft symphonious shell.

Totally stumbled on Charles Darwin’s grandfather’s books and had so much fun with these complex, grandiose, Walt Whitman-esque poems and their notes and footnotes, and one more layer of secondary notes to the notes. Following that chain of thought was a hoot, sometimes boring, but still fun.

For some reason, I completely understand now how Charles Darwin was able to discern natural selection and evolution and change the way we understood our place in the world. His grandfather presaged it in his work and poetry, and was a larger than life, unapologetic, hedonistic lover of life in stuffy Victorian England, and that can’t help but enrich the way his descendants move through the world, making sense of it, making up theories and testing them, even if Charlie Darwin never left England after the Beagle voyage and was a nice and boring risk averse type of fellow. His risk taking was during the voyage and then he hesitated publishing his “species theory” for over 20 years.

I wish Erasmus lived to see it and wrote poems about it.

Bold, plain text is the poem
Italics is the first, brief notes.
Bold italics is the longer explanation.

115 II. "ETHEREAL POWERS! YOU chase the shooting stars,
Or yoke the vollied lightenings to your cars,
Cling round the aërial bow with prisms bright,
And pleased untwist the sevenfold threads of light;
Eve's silken couch with gorgeous tints adorn,
120 And fire the arrowy throne of rising Morn.
—OR, plum'd with flame, in gay battalion's spring
To brighter regions borne on broader wing;
Where lighter gases, circumfused on high,
Form the vast concave of exterior sky;
125 With airy lens the scatter'd rays assault,
And bend the twilight round the dusky vault;
Ride, with broad eye and scintillating hair,
The rapid Fire-ball through the midnight air;
Dart from the North on pale electric streams,
130 Fringing Night's sable robe with transient beams.
—OR rein the Planets in their swift careers,
Gilding with borrow'd light their twinkling spheres;
Alarm with comet-blaze the sapphire plain,
The wan stars glimmering through its silver train;
135 Gem the bright Zodiac, stud the glowing pole,
Or give the Sun's phlogistic orb to roll.

The meteors called shooting stars, the lightening, the rainbow, and the clouds, are phenomena of the lower regions of the atmosphere. The twilight, the meteors call'd fire-balls, or flying dragons, and the northern lights, inhabit the higher regions of the atmosphere.

And bend the twilight. l. 126. The crepuscular atmosphere, or the region where the light of the sun ceases to be refracted to us, is estimated by philosophers to be between 40 and 50 miles high, at which time the sun is about 18 degrees below the horizon; and the rarity of the air is supposed to be from 4,000 to 10,000 times greater than at the surface of the earth.

ADDITIONAL NOTES.
NOTE I.—METEORS.
Etherial Forms! you chase the shooting stars, Or yoke the vollied lightnings to your cars.

CANTO I. l. 115.
There seem to be three concentric strata of our incumbent atmosphere; in which, or between them, are produced four kinds of meteors; lightning, shooting stars, fire-balls, and northern lights. First, the lower region of air, or that which is dense enough to resist by the adhesion of its particles the descent of condensed vapour, or clouds, which may extend from one to three or four miles high. In this region the common lightning is produced from the accumulation or defect of electric matter in those floating fields of vapour either in respect to each other, or in respect to the earth beneath them, or the dissolved vapour above them, which is constantly varying both with the change of the form of the clouds, which thus evolve a greater or less surface; and also with their ever-changing degree of condensation.

YOU from deep cauldrons and unmeasured caves
150 Blow flaming airs, or pour vitrescent waves;
O'er shining oceans ray volcanic light,
Or hurl innocuous embers to the night.—
While with loud shouts to Etna Heccla calls,
And Andes answers from his beacon'd walls..

Hurl innocuous embers. l. 152. The immediate cause of volcanic eruptions is believed to be owing to the water of the sea, or from lakes, or inundations, finding itself a passage into the subterraneous fires, which may lie at great depths. This must first produce by its coldness a condensation of the vapour there existing, or a vacuum, and thus occasion parts of the earth's crust or shell to be forced down by the pressure of the incumbent atmosphere. Afterwards the water being suddenly raised into steam produces all the explosive effects of earthquakes. And by new accessions of water during the intervals of the explosions the repetition of the shocks is caused. These circumstances were hourly illustrated by the fountains of boiling water in Iceland, in which the surface of the water in the boiling wells sunk down low before every new ebullition.

"HENCE ductile CLAYS in wide expansion spread,
Soft as the Cygnet's down, their snow-white bed;
With yielding flakes successive forms reveal,
280 And change obedient to the whirling wheel.
—First CHINA'S sons, with early art elate,
Form'd the gay tea-pot, and the pictured plate;
Saw with illumin'd brow and dazzled eyes
In the red stove vitrescent colours rise;
285 Speck'd her tall beakers with enamel'd stars,
Her monster-josses, and gigantic jars;
Smear'd her huge dragons with metallic hues,
With golden purples, and cobaltic blues;
Bade on wide hills her porcelain castles glare,
290 And glazed Pagodas tremble in the air.

XI. "With crest of gold should sultry SIRIUS glare,
And with his kindling tresses scorch the air;
With points of flame the shafts of Summer arm,
500 And burn the beauties he designs to warm;—
—So erst when JOVE his oath extorted mourn'd,
And clad in glory to the Fair return'd;
While Loves at forky bolts their torches light,
And resting lightnings gild the car of Night;
505 His blazing form the dazzled Maid admir'd,
Met with fond lips, and in his arms expir'd;—
NYMPHS! on light pinion lead your banner'd hosts
High o'er the cliffs of ORKNEY'S gulphy coasts;
Leave on your left the red volcanic light,
510 Which HECCLA lifts amid the dusky night;
Mark on the right the DOFRINE'S snow-capt brow,
Where whirling MAELSTROME roars and foams below;
Watch with unmoving eye, where CEPHEUS bends
His triple crown, his scepter'd hand extends;
Where studs CASSIOPE with stars unknown
Her golden chair, and gems her sapphire zone;
Where with vast convolution DRACO holds
The ecliptic axis in his scaly folds,
O'er half the skies his neck enormous rears,
520 And with immense meanders parts the BEARS;
Onward, the kindred BEARS with footstep rude
Dance round the Pole, pursuing and pursued.

[With stars unknown. l. 515. Alluding to the star which appeared in the chair
of Cassiopea in the year 1572, which at first surpassed Jupiter in magnitude and brightness, diminished by degrees and disappeared in 18 months; it alarmed all the astronomers of the age, and was esteemed a comet by some.

Hear, oh, BRITANNIA! potent Queen of isles,
whom fair Art, and meek Religion smiles,
Now AFRIC'S coasts thy craftier sons invade
With murder, rapine, theft,—and call it Trade!
425 —The SLAVE, in chains, on supplicating knee,
Spreads his wide arms, and lifts his eyes to Thee;
With hunger pale, with wounds and toil oppress'd,
"ARE WE NOT BRETHREN?" sorrow choaks the rest;—
—AIR! bear to heaven upon thy azure flood
430 Their innocent cries!—EARTH! cover not their blood!

So, late descry'd by HERSCHEL'S piercing sight,
360 Hang the bright squadrons of the twinkling Night;
Ten thousand marshall'd stars, a silver zone,
Effuse their blended lustres round her throne;
Suns call to suns, in lucid clouds conspire,
And light exterior skies with golden fire;
365 Resistless rolls the illimitable sphere,
And one great circle forms the unmeasured year.
—Roll on, YE STARS! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
370 And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach;—
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
375 Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
—Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal NATURE lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
380 And soars and shines, another and the same.

Near and more near. l. 369. From the vacant spaces in some parts of the
heavens, and the correspondent clusters of stars in their vicinity, Mr. Herschel
concludes that the nebulae or constellations of fixed stars are approaching each other, and must finally coalesce in one mass.

XI. "Come, YE SOFT SYLPHS! who fan the Paphian groves,
And bear on sportive wings the callow Loves;
Call with sweet whisper, in each gale that blows,
The slumbering Snow-drop from her long repose;
445 Charm the pale Primrose from her clay-cold bed,
Unveil the bashful Violet's tremulous head;
While from her bud the playful Tulip breaks,
And young Carnations peep with blushing cheeks;
Bid the closed Petals from nocturnal cold
450 The virgin Style in silken curtains fold,
Shake into viewless air the morning dews,
And wave in light their iridescent hues;
While from on high the bursting Anthers trust
To the mild breezes their prolific dust;
455 Or bend in rapture o'er the central Fair,
Love out their hour, and leave their lives in air.
So in his silken sepulchre the Worm,
Warm'd with new life, unfolds his larva-form;
Erewhile aloft in wanton circles moves,
460 And woos on Hymen-wings his velvet loves.

Love out their hour. l. 456. The vegetable passion of love is agreeably seen in the flower of the parnassia, in which the males alternately approach and recede from the female…

[Anthony Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reviewers who have read ‘The Loves of the Plants’, the second part of ‘The Botanic Garden’, have concentrated on its pervy aspects. Although I have not read this, there’s plenty that might be described as pervy in the first part too, so I wouldn't disagree with their point of view. As one reviewer observes, there's a lot about the sexual aspects of plant life and not much about the importance or the beauty of stems and leaves. But then that seems to be what Darwin was interested in, as was Linnaeus, clearly a man he admires immensely and whom he lauds in his opening Apology. All the same, some of his poetic descriptions of plant life can come across as pretty fruity and salacious, and will allow a reader to think there may be more about the man here than about the science.

However, I did not read ‘The Economy of Vegetation’ to find out about the sex life of plants: instead, I came at it as a consequence of reading Tristram Hunt's biography of Josiah Wedgwood, 'The Radical Potter'. In that book there are frequent references to Erasmus Darwin as one of Wedgwood's friends and a fellow member of the Lunatics, a group of 18th century intellectuals who met regularly to discuss things that interested them, mostly philosophy and natural philosophy (i.e. science). There was mention of 'The Botanic Garden'. As I'm interested in Charles Darwin, a sucker for rhyming couplets, am generally interested in science, and take delight in anything quirky, a verse poem about vegetation by an early-modern scientist seemed to fit the bill.

I imagine that from an academic's point of view the poem has a lot to offer. All the same, as a bloke with a degree in Eng Lit whose enthusiasm is wide-ranging but whose serious academic credentials are pretty sad, I liked what Darwin had to offer me. Quite early on, I thought he was setting out to display himself as a gentleman whose leisure allowed him to cultivate the arts which, for him, would have included science as well as what we now generally term the humanities. This requires him not only to work in heroic couplets, but to adopt a classical framework in his poem in which each of its four Cantos is structured according to one of the traditional elements of fire, earth, water and air. He duly seeks assistance from a muse etc etc., and generally shows off not only the breadth of his classical and poetical learning but also his abilities as a polymath able to practise those arts of which he has a knowledge.

Within this framework, Darwin's scientific predilections allow him to explore the influence that contemporary science attributes to those four elements on the growth of plants. There is plenty in the poem that is obscure, but the overwhelmingly copious footnotes explain what it is that he is versifying about, and, frankly, I often found these notes more interesting that the verse. They opened a whole world of science that was a combination of speculation and experiments, referencing all his friends and acquaintances in different fields of - and I hesitate to use the word, it seems so distant from we now associate it with - research, both British and European. The poem allows the reader an entrée into the whole world of a late 18th century clique of learned and curious men - and 'curious men' is a phrase that invites interpretation and discussion! This world includes from time to time bizarre digressions about people of Darwin's acquaintance, and contemporary anecdotes that may or may not illustrate his scientific point.

There were two other features of the poem I enjoyed, both pretty personal. Firstly, I read a lot of it aloud because I liked the sound of it, and I found Darwin a not unskilled versifier. Secondly, as a logophile, the poem is full of words we would certainly now regard as excitingly recondite. Here are a few: superincumbent, terraqueous, mochoe, refluent, operose, tragopogon, irriguous, bullition, hybernaculum and minium. I loved all that side of Darwin’s writing.

Nevertheless, I don't think I'll be reading the second part of the poem!