The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air.

219

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.

223

Between the time of the wind and the snow,
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many
a speck,

Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's

back.

227

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,

And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. 231

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

235

With a spirit of growth had been animated! 239

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water
snakes.

243

And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapors arose which have strength to kill:
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could

melt.

And unetuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive Plant like one forbid
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves which together grew
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

247

251

255

For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.

For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:

He had torn the cataracts from the hills

259

And they clanked at his girdle like manacles; 263

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

Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air
And were caught in the branches naked and
bare.

267

271

275

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; 279

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. 283

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

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.

287

291

Whether that lady's gentle mind,

No longer with the form combined

Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,

295

To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

303

That garden sweet, that lady fair,

And all sweet shapes and odors there,
In truth have never passed away:
'T is we, 't is ours, are changed; not they.

307

For love, and beauty, and delight,

There is no death nor change: their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure

No light, being themselves obscure.

1820.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

311

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

ST. AGNES' Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen

grass,

And silent was the flock in woolly fold:

Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he

told

His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censer old,

Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his

prayer he saith.

His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,

Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to

freeze,

Emprison'd in black, purgatorial rails:
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries,

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