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

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Ebook has 247 lines and 31308 words, and 5 pages

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.

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, 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 favourite Cradled within the embrace of night.

SECOND PART

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.

XXX

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 Earth!

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 Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake, As if yet around her he lingering were, 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 going of the wind Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

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.

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 through all their frame.

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.

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.

XLI

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.

XLII

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.

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!

THIRD PART

XLIV

Three days the flowers of the garden fair, Like stars when the moon is awakened, were, Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

XLV

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;

XLVI

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;

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.

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.

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, Leaf after leaf, day after day, Were massed into the common clay.

LII

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, 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.

And the gusty winds waked the wing?d 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.

LIV

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.

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.

LVI

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.

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.

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 With a spirit of growth had been animated!

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