Read Ebook: The sensitive plant by Shelley Percy Bysshe Rhys Ernest Author Of Introduction Etc Housman Laurence Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 247 lines and 31308 words, and 5 pages

Illustrator: Laurence Housman

Of this Special Edition on Japanese Paper only 50 copies have been printed for the Guild of Women-Binders, of which this is No. 38

THE SENSITIVE PLANT BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

ILLUSTRATED BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN

London: Printed for the Guild of Women-Binders. 61 Charing Cross Road. W.C. 1899

THE SENSITIVE PLANT

When Shelley wrote THE SENSITIVE PLANT he was drawing very near the end of his poetry. It was one of the poems belonging to the days at Pisa, whither the Shelleys had gone late in the January of 1820. In the next winter--a winter of many painful associations for him, and many discouragements and reminders of evil fortune--he wrote this mysterious song of beauty and death. The idea of it appears to have come to him from the flowers which Mrs. Shelley had collected round her in her own room at the house they occupied on the south side of the Arno. Their fragrance, as it exhaled on the wintry Italian sunshine, and the sense of their fading loveliness, added to certain graver influences of which we read,--the death of a dearly-loved child, the illness of a dear friend,--contributed, no doubt, to provide that "atmosphere of memorial dejection and very sorrowful delight," of which an old Italian poet speaks, as being propitious for the working of the imagination. But a miracle is not less miraculous because we know the conditions under which it was worked, and something inexplicable remains about THE SENSITIVE PLANT after we have gathered together everything we can of its circumstances and the moods of its poet in the memorable Pisan days when it was written.

A few stanzas later, and we come to the idea of the strange seed, which was wrapt in mould, and watered all the summer with sweet dew. At length:

This brings us as near, I imagine, to the idea of THE SENSITIVE PLANT as we are likely to find ourselves in any other most Shelleyan region of his poetry. The lines recur persistently to the mind in reading the later poem; and almost as suggestively is it haunted by one passage at least in the "Defence," which speaks with a sort of aerial eloquence of a Poetry whose art it is to arrest "the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide."

When one considers the rarity and the half-impalpable conditions of this chosen realm of his poetry, and turns to THE SENSITIVE PLANT as one of its most essential expressions, one is at first rendered half-incredulous of the power of a kindred art to interpret effectively such a poem. But, in fact, there is a much more concrete imagery--whether of flowers or weeds, directly presented or definitely symbolised; or of the Lady who haunts among them--than one at all remembers until one takes to conning its stanzas closely with an eye to such effects.

THE SENSITIVE PLANT lends itself more readily to the art of the symbolist, in particular, than any other of Shelley's poems. It would be quite possible for a critic with a turn for metaphysics, and a certain German patience of analytic ingenuity, to read into its exquisite fable of mortality a whole world of significance, which the poet himself had never suspected. But the symbolic artist, if he be too, as needs be, a symbolic poet, is saved by his art. The spirit of the poem is likely to obsess him, and compel from him only such an interpretation as is, allowing for the casual differences of kindred arts and sympathetic temperaments, truly and finely accordant with its own essential qualities and terms of expression. The true poets have that power of continuing to enlarge the original issues and influences of their song long after its immediate effect has died away. Shelley commands with a more than usual lyric enchantment a sphere that, like the magic house of Merlin, can go on enlarging itself; until one figures him, not as the sad spirit of the garden in this poem, but as the radiant spirit of his "Hymn of Apollo":

ERNEST RHYS.

In one sense a beautiful poem can never be illustrated: being beautiful it is already perfect, and, to intelligent minds, illustrates itself. Everything that it says it says in the best possible way; within the limits of the medium chosen, it is absolute.

If, therefore, illustration is to be an attempt to say over again what the poet has already said perfectly, it is certain to prove itself superfluous, and to be nothing better than a labour of tautology. But there is a quality in all fine work which gives invitation into the charmed circle of its influence to whatever is freshly and sympathetically touched with the ideas it conveys. Great work tells so differently on different minds; not by contrary but by kindred ways it speaks freshly perhaps to each individual.

Thus, to express accurately in another medium an appreciation, an individual sense of delight or emotion in work of finished and constructive beauty is the only way of illustration which seems to me profitable. The appreciation may be faulty; but in so far as it states a personal view of its subject, it has legitimate standing ground.

I have endeavoured to make evident in my drawings the particular way in which this poem has appealed to me. The garden, fine and elaborate, full of artifice, opposing with an infinity of delicate labour the random overgrowth of the wilderness which seeks jealously to encroach on it, has perhaps this to hint concerning all forms of beauty of man's devising,--that, in spite of the pains entailed in their cultivation, the fragile and conditional state of their constitution remains: over all such things at last comes the tread of Pan, effacing, and replacing with his own image and superscription, the parenthetic grace--so spiritual almost in some of its suggestions--of the garden deity.

It is an unpopular thing, may be, to assert that man's sense of beauty is so conditional to himself and the uses he makes of it. Yet here we are shown how, with war to the death, unsightly overthrow follows his abandonment of his stolen pleasure-ground, and wipes out his trespassing footprints.

Man's sense of beauty is his own: it is not Nature's. The aim of all art is to restrict Nature, and teach her that her place is not in the high places of men; and we only admire Nature because in the present strength of our civilisation we are strong enough to pet her. Hannibal was a better judge of the true unsightliness of Alpine scenery than we ourselves.

I should have preferred to add nothing to what I have drawn: but an explanation of my unkind view of the rival claims of Pan and the Garden-god has been wrung from me.

For the present the genius of civilisation, numerating duration into hours and years and centuries for man's convenience, overrides the slow-crawling tortoise of Time: but it will not always be so; and earth will come at last to be altogether rid of us and that superfluous "sense of beauty" which has so long yoked her back, and hedged her wastes and furrowed her fields.

LAURENCE HOUSMAN.

THE SENSITIVE PLANT

FIRST PART

A sensitive plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, and the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide 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 windflowers and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness;

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows; And all rare blossoms from every clime Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

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 moss, Which led through the garden along and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells As fair as the fabulous asphodels, And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too, Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.

And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers ,

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;

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 Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, Received more than all, it loved more than ever, Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; Radiance and odour are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full, It desires what it has not, the beautiful!

The light winds which from unsustaining wings Shed the music of many murmurings; The beams which dart from many a star Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;

The plum?d insects swift and free, Like golden boats on a sunny sea, Laden with light and odour, which pass Over the gleam of the living grass;

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, Then wander like spirits among the spheres, Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;

The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odour, and beam, Move, as reeds in a single stream;

Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet