Wreathing

The wreathing fires made way. They wrapt the ship in splendour wild, They caught the flag on high, And streamed above the gallant child Like banners in the sky.

As when a snake, that through the winter's cold / lay swoln and hidden in the ground from sight, / gorged with rank herbs, forth issues to the light, / and sleek with shining youth and newly drest, / wreathing its slippery volumes, towers upright / and, glorying, to the sunbeam rears its breast, / and darts a three-forked tongue, and points a flaming crest.

To have demolished and rebuilt the walls, would have been a very costly expedient, and as the least of two evils, the painter's brush was resorted to; here and there however, above some of the windows, the black wreathings of the smoke are still discernible through the white covering.

The ground rose on each side like a wall, but hung with natural tapestry—the creeping plants which in the South take such graceful and wreathing forms in their foliage.