The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Each and all like ministering angels were 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 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, [Plant.) Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive The Sensitive-Plant was the earliest PART II. THERE was a Power in this sweet place, 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: 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 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, 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 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, In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, The freshest her gentle hands could pull For the poor banished insects, whose intent, But the bee, and the beam-like 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, This fairest creature from earliest spring And ere the first leaf looked brown-she died! PART III. THREE days the flowers of the garden fair, She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. And on the fourth, the Sensitive-Plant And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, The weary sound and the heavy breath, The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, And sat in the pines and gave groan for groan. The garden, once fair, became cold and foul, Swift summer into the autumn flowed, The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, |