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PART SECOND

There was a Power in this sweet place,

An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, Was as God is to the starry scheme.

A Lady, the wonder of her kind,

Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

Tended the garden from morn to even ;
And the meteors of that sublunar heaven,

Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!

She had no companion of mortal race,

But her tremulous breath and her flushing face Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her

eyes,

That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from

her.

Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
You might hear, by the heaving of her breast,

15 morn, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || moon, Shelley, 1820.

That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

And wherever her airy footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep.

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.

She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,-

In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.

23 and going, Shelley, 1820 || and the going, Harvard MS., Shelley, 18391.

Mrs.

But the bee, and the beam-like ephemeris Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss

The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she Make her attendant angels be.

And many an antenatal tomb,

Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

This fairest creature from earliest spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
All the sweet season of summer tide,

And ere the first leaf looked brown she died!

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PART THIRD

Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,

And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;

The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death,
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank.
59 All || Through all, Harvard MS.

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.

Swift summer into the autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.

The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.

And Indian plants, of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf by leaf, day after day,

Were massed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead,

19 lovely, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || lively, Shelley, 1820 23 of the morning || of morning, Harvard MS.

26 snow, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || now, Shelley, 1820. 28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan, Harvard MS.

32 by, Harvard MS. || after, Shelley, 1820.

32 after, Harvard MS., Shelley, 1820 || by, Mrs. Shelley, 18391.

Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,

Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, Which rotted into the earth with them.

The water-blooms under the rivulet

Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers.

Between the time of the wind and the snow
All loathliest weeds began to grow,

Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,

Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back.

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.

And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.

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