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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 noon 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;

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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,

I dare not guess; but in this life
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 passed away :
'Tis we, 'tis 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.

A VISION OF THE SEA.

'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,

And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from heaven,

She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin,
And bend, as if heaven was ruining in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible

mass

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them they

pass

To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,

And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,

Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed Through the low trailing rack of the tempest, is lost

In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep

Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the
gale,

Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing
iron,

With splendour and terror the black ship environ;

Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire [fire,
The pyramid-billows, with white points of brine,
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.

The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast

Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has past.

The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven

Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven.

The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,

Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to fold

Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,

One deck is burst up from the waters below, And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow

O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other? Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast! Are those

Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold)

Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,

The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating Are these all?

[plank?

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,

And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,

Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep, Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep

Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,

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.

No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,

It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. 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, It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear

Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye;
Whilst its mother's is lustreless. "Smile not, my
child,

But sleep 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?

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?"

Lo! the ship

Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs,

and eyne,

Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Burst at once from their vitals tremendously,
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the
wave,

Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
The hurricane came from the west, and past on
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form

Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the

waste.

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 crag:

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 flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And over head glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves
behold,

The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still 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

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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

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I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast ;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits,

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

m.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

IV.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

v.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my
Is the million-coloured bow;
[chair,
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.

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THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle-
Why not I with thine ?

See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth,

And the moonbeams kiss the sea ;-
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?

January, 1820.

ΤΟ

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, Thou needest not fear mine; My spirit is too deeply laden Ever to burthen thine.

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
Thou needest not fear mine;

Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

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