PART L

A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
And the Spirit of Love fell everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
Like a doc 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,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied windflowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.

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
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
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,
As a Menad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt, 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,
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too,
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.

And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;

For each one was interpenetrated

With the light and the odour its neighbour 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;
Radiance and odour are not its dower;
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the beautiful!

The light winds, which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar ;

The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass;

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;

The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Which, like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odour, and beam, Move, as reeds in a single stream;

Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.

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
In an ocean of dreams without a sound; [drowned
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
Up-gathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of night.

PART II.

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 prest:
You might hear, by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and the 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.

But the bee and the beamlike 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!

PART III.

THREE days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of the 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;

O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast

Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast

Down the deep, which closed on them above and around,

And the sharks and the dog-fish their grave-clothes unbound,

And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down

From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,
But seven remained. Six the thunder had smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has
written

His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck

An oak splinter pierced through his breast and his back,

And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck

Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near, It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear

| Is ontahining the meteors; its bosom beats high, The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye; Whilst its mother's is lustreless. "Smile hot, my child,

But sisep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and
bed,

Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!

Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we, That when the ship sinks we no longer may be! What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more 1

To be after life what we have been before? [eyes, Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,

Have so long called my child, but which now fades away

Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower ?"

Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world

Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous erng:

And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past,

Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where

The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air

Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise fow in,
Unimpeded, keen, zouden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening sway,
And the caverns of cloud are turn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wagy
Laued by the motion and marmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And over head glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wreeks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped wares
behold,

The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made stiil by the presence of
Love,

Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle, Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's azure smile,

The wide world of waters is vibrating.

Where

Is the ship! On the verge of the wave where it lay
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray [battle
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the
Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the
rattle

Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the
veins,

Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash

As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder! the

screams

And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth oceanstreams,

Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of
thought

Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn

In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,
"Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone,
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death,
Fear,

Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere, Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread

Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,

Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring: so smiled

The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and

brother

The child and the ocean still smile on each other, Whilst