POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. THE SENSITIVE PLANT. PART I. A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the spring arose on the garden fair, And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noon-tide 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 wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, 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, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells, And flowerets which drooping as day drooped too, And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, Shone smiling to heaven, and every one 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 For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, The light winds, which from unsustaining wings The plumed insects swift and free, The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Each and all like ministering angels were And when evening descended from heaven above, And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound; 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 PART II. THERE was a power in this sweet place, Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, 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, She had no companion of mortal race, But her tremulous breath and her flushing face As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. Her step seemed to pity the grass it prest: And wherever her airy footstep trod, I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet She sprinkled bright water from the stream She lifted their heads with her tender hands, And all killing insects and gnawing worms, In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, 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 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 IIL THREE days the flowers of the garden fair, And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, |