XXII. For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon XXIII. For Winter came: the wind was his whip; He had torn the cataracts from the hills, XXIV. His breath was a chain which without a sound XXV. Then the weeds, which were forms of living death, Fled from the frost to the earth beneath : Their decay and sudden flight from frost XXVI. And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant XXVII. 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; XXVIII. And a northern Whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, Shook the boughs, thus laden and heavy and stiff, And snapped them off with his rigid griff. XXIX. 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. 1. 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. II. Whether that Lady's gentle mind, III. I dare not guess. But, in this life IV. It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, V. That garden sweet, that Lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. VI. For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change; their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure. LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought- To catch the idle buzzers of the day But a soft cell where, when that fades away, Which in those hearts which must remember me Whoever should behold me now, I wist, To breathe a soul into the iron heart Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Wit of that man of God, Saint Dominic, Or those in philanthropic council met With thumbscrews, wheels with tooth and spike and jag, Of Cornwall, and the storm-encompassed isles Or heap himself in such a horrid mass To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood: Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd blocks, Of wave and wind and time.-Upon the table A pretty bowl of wood-not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink And call out to the cities o'er their head. Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead, In colour like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep when from the moist moon rains Is still-blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilver-for I A hollow screw with cogs : Henry will know |