On those that were faint with the sunny Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 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, Like stars when the moon is awakened, were, Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant And sustained them with rods and osier Felt the sound of the funeral chaunt, 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, 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. their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris moths that kiss foul, Like the corpse of her who had been its Were bent and tangled across the walks ; And the leafless network of parasite bowers 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. 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. The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson And thistles, and nettles, and darnels snow, Paved the turf and the moss below. The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, Stretched out its long and hollow shank, Like the head and the skin of a dying And stifled the air till the dead wind man. And Indian plants, of scent and hue And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past; 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. stank. And unctuous meteors from spray to spray First there came down a thawing rain And its dull drops froze on the boughs again, Then there steamed up a freezing dew By a venomous blight was burned and Which to the drops of the thaw-rain bit. The Sensitive Plant like one forbid grew; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Of its folded leaves which together grew Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; every pore out, Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, And snapped them off with his rigid griff. When winter had gone and spring came back As blood to a heart that will beat no The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and more. docks, and darnels, For Winter came: the wind was his Rose like the dead from their ruined whip: One choppy finger was on his lip: His breath was a chain which without The earth, and the air, and the water bound; He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot throne By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone. Then the weeds which were forms of living death Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. charnels. CONCLUSION Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that sat Ere its outward form had known decay, Whether that lady's gentle mind, I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet Plant want: The birds dropped stiff from the frozen That garden sweet, that lady fair, air And all sweet shapes and odours there, And were caught in the branches naked In truth have never past away: and bare. 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, Exceeds our organs, which endure CANCELLED PASSAGE Dim mirrors of ruin hang gleaming about; While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fireflowing iron With splendour and terror the black ship environ, Their moss rotted off them, flake by Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a flake, Till the thick stalk stuck like a mur derer's stake, mine of pale fire spire In many a Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble The pyramid-billows with white points From the stark night of vapours the dim Of the whirlwind that stripped it of rain is driven, branches has past. And when lightning is loosed, like a The intense thunder-balls which are rain deluge from heaven, ing from heaven She sees the black trunks of the water- Have shattered its mast, and it stands On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold they pass To their graves in the deep with an Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, earthquake of sound, And the waves and the thunders made | One silent around from the hold, deck is burst up by the waters below, Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, And it splits like the ice when the thawnow tossed breezes blow Through the low-trailing rack of the O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit tempest, is lost on the other? In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those down the sweep of the deep vale It sinks, and the walls of the watery Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, Whose depths of dread calm are un- In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; moved by the gale, (What now makes them tame, is what Than heaven, when, unbinding its starbraided hair, then made them bold;) the sea. Who crouch, side by side, and have It sinks with the sun on the earth and driven, like a crank, The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank. Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon, She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee, It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near, And there seemed to be fire in the beams It would play with those eyes where the O'er the populous vessel. And even and But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled morn, With their hammocks for coffins the sea- Of the pang that awaits us, whatever men aghast that be, Like dead men the dead limbs of their So dreadful since thou must divide it The mariners died; on the eve of this day, When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, But seven remained. has smitten, What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more? Not To be afterlife what we have been before? Six the thunder Not to touch those sweet hands? to look on those eyes, And they lie black as mummies on which Those lips, and that hair, all the Time has written His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which from the deck An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back, And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. No more? At the helm sits a woman Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports more fair |
