POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 THE SENSITIVE PLANT PART FIRST A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the Spring arose on the garden fair, But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant. The snowdrop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, The Sensitive Plant. Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Composed at Pisa, and dated, in the Harvard MS., March, 1820. 6 Like, felt, Harvard MS., Shelley, 1820 || And, Mrs. Shelley, 18391, fell, Mrs. Shelley, 18392. Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, It was felt like an odor within the sense; And the rose like a nymph to the bath ad dressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tube rose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows; 29-32 omit, Harvard MS. And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom, With golden and green light, slanting through Their heaven of many a tangled hue, Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Which led through the garden along and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells, And flowrets which, drooping as day drooped too, And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them 47 and or, Harvard MS. For each one was interpenetrated With the light and the odor its neighbor shed, Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere. But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, Received more than all, it loved more than ever, Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver; For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, The light winds which from unsustaining wings The plumèd insects swift and free, The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 82 The | And the, Harvard MS. The quivering vapors of dim noontide, Each and all like ministering angels were And when evening descended from heaven above, And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep, And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound, Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress The light sand which paves it, consciousness; (Only overhead the sweet nightingale Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, And snatches of its Elysian chant Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant); The Sensitive Plant was the earliest |