At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves which together grew,
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 ;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore,
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.

For Winter came: The wind was his whip;
One choppy finger was on his lip;

He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;

His breath was a chain which without a sound
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;

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Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:

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The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air,

And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain

And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,

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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,

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;

But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and

darnels,

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

CONCLUSION

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,

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I dare not guess; but in this life

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Of error, ignorance, and strife,

Where nothing is, but all things seem,

And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet

Pleasant, if one considers it,

To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair,

And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never past away:
'Tis we, 't is ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,

There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

1820.

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DIRGE FOR THE YEAR

ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,

For the year is but asleep:

See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
Mocking your untimely weeping.

As an earthquake rocks a corse

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In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold year to-day;

Solemn hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.

As the wild air stirs and sways

The tree-swung cradle of a child,

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So the breath of these rude days
Rocks the year : - be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise

Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps-but, O ye hours! Follow with May's fairest flowers. January 1, 1821.

TO NIGHT

SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave,

Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,-
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day,
Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand —
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried:
Wouldst thou me ?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee:

Shall I nestle near thy side?

Wouldst thou me?— And I replied:
No, not thee!

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon

Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovéd Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

1821.

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SONNET TO BYRON

[I AM afraid these verses will not please you, but] If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill

Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair The ministration of the thoughts that fill

The mind which, like a worm whose life may A portion of the unapproachable,

Marks your creations rise as fast and fair

As perfect worlds at the Creator's will.
But such is my regard that nor your power

share

To soar above the heights where others [climb],

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