And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noonday Unseen; every branch on which they alit First there came down a thawing rain And its dull drops froze on the boughs again, Then there steamed up a freezing dew By a venomous blight was burned and Which to the drops of the thaw-rain bit. The Sensitive Plant like one forbid Wept, and the tears within each lid grew; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Of its folded leaves which together grew Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 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 out, Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, And snapped them off with his rigid griff. When winter had gone and spring came back As blood to a heart that will beat no The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and more. docks, and darnels, For Winter came: the wind was his 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, Whether that lady's gentle mind, It is a modest creed, and yet That garden sweet, that lady fair, For love, and beauty, and delight, Exceeds our organs, which endure CANCELLED PASSAGE Dim mirrors of ruin hang gleaming about; While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fireflowing iron With splendour and terror the black ship environ, Their moss rotted off them, flake by Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire The pyramid-billows with white points of brine In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine, As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has past. The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven She sees the black trunks of the water- Have shattered its mast, and it stands On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: Like a corpse on the clay which is Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, And it splits like the ice when the thawnow tossed breezes blow Through the low trailing rack of the O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit tempest, is lost on the other? In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those down the sweep of the deep vale It sinks, and the walls of the watery Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, Whose depths of dread calm are un- In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold; moved by the gale, (What now makes them tame, is what Than heaven, when, unbinding its starthen made them bold;) braided hair, Who crouch, side by side, and have It sinks with the sun on the earth and driven, like a crank, the sea. The deep grip of their claws through the She clasps a bright child on her up vibrating plank. gathered knee, Are these all? Nine weeks the tall It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the Like dead men the dead limbs of their So dreadful since thou must divide it Down the deep, which closed on them Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed, above and around, And the sharks and the dog-fish their Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis The mariners died; on the eve of this day, When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, But seven remained. has smitten, That when the ship sinks we no longer may be? What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more? Not To be after life what we have been before? Six the thunder Not to touch those sweet hands? to look on those eyes, And they lie black as mummies on which Those lips, and that hair, all the Time has written smiling disguise His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which from the deck I, day by day, An oak-splinter pierced through his Have so long called my child, but breast and his back, which now fades away And hung out to the tempest, a wreck Like a rainbow, and I the fallen on the wreck. shower?" Lo! the ship At the helm sits a woman Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip; No more? more fair The tigers leap up when they feel the Of clear morning, the beams of the sunslow brine rise flow in, Crawling inch by inch on them, hair, Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalears, limbs, and eyne, line, Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate hoarse cry Bursts at once from their vitals tremend- They encounter, but interpenetrate. And that breach in the tempest is widening away, ously, And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave, Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day, And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings Lulled by the motion and murmurings, Hurried on by the might of the hurri- And the long glassy heave of the rocking The hurricane came from the west, and And overhead glorious, but dreadful past on to see By the path of the gate of the eastern The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste. Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag: like passions made still by the presence of Love, Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle, Round sea birds and wrecks, paved Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray And the dense clouds in many a ruin With a sea-snake. The foam and the and rag, smoke of the battle Like the stones of a temple ere earth- Stain the clear air with sunbows; the quake has past, jar, and the rattle Like the dust of its fall, on the whirl- Of solid bones crushed by the infinite They are scattered like foam on the Of the snake's adamantine voluminoustorrent; and where ness; The wind has burst out from the chasm, And the hum of the hot blood that from the air spouts and rains Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded The child and the ocean still smile on the veins, Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams Whilst each other, THE CLOUD I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth I bear light shade for the leaves when ocean streams, laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night 'tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, Lightning my pilot sits, 'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, almost gone, It struggles and howls at fits; Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, the sea. |