(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 favorite,
Cradled within the embrace of night.

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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

118

122

Earth!

126

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 Para

dise:

130

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,
Tho' the veil of daylight concealed him from
her.

Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion

134

behind.

138

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. 142

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 thro' all their

frame.

146

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. 150

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.

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158

162

166

170

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!

174

PART III

Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous

She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. 178

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; 182

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; 186

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 sate in the pines, and gave groan for

groan.

190

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep.

Swift summer into the autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and
bright,

Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

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199

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.

The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, Like the head and the skin of a dying man.

And Indian plants, of scent and hue

The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,

203

Leaf by leaf, day after day,

Were massed into the common clay.

207

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. 211

And the gusty winds waked the wingèd seeds,
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's

stem,

Which rotted into the earth with them.

215