But the bee, and the beam-like 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, This fairest creature from earliest spring And ere the first leaf looked brown - she died! PART THIRD Three days the flowers of the garden fair, She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius. And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, The weary sound and the heavy breath, 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, Swift summer into the autumn flowed, The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, And Indian plants, of scent and hue Leaf by leaf, day after day, Were massed into the common clay. And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, 19 lovely, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || lively, Shelley, 1820. 23 of the morning of morning, Harvard MS. 26 snow, Harvard MS., Mrs. Shelley, 18391 || now, Shelley, 1820. 28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan, Harvard MS. 32 by, Harvard MS. || after, Shelley, 1820. 32 after, Harvard MS., Shelley, 1820 || by, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed; And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, Which rotted into the earth with them. The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set; Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Between the time of the wind and the snow 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 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, Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, Dammed it up with roots knotted like watersnakes. And hour by hour, when the air was still, And unctuous meteors from spray to spray The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 63 mists, Harvard MS. 66: Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake, Infecting the winds that wander by. Shelley, 1820, Harvard MS. cancelled, omit, Mrs. Shelley, 18391. The sap shrank to the root through every pore, For Winter came; the wind was his whip; He had torn the cataracts from the hills His breath was a chain which without a sound Then the weeds which were forms of living death And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant First there came down a thawing rain, And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 96 and their sudden flight from the, Harvard MS. 98 And, omit, Harvard MS. |