And Indian plants, of scent and hue The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Were massed into the common clay. 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 Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem. The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set; Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Between the time of the wind and the snow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many 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, Stretch'd 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. And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated! Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, And hour by hour, when the air was still, And unctuous meteors from spray to spray The Sensitive-Plant, like one forbid, For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon For Winter came. The wind was his whip; 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 And under the roots of the Sensitive-Plant First there came down a thawing rain, And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about When winter had gone and spring came back, Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. CONCLUSION. WHETHER the Sensitive-Plant, or that Whether that lady's gentle mind, I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet To own that death itself must be, That garden sweet, that lady fair, 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed! not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, 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. |