ing wings,

Shed the music of many murmurings; The beams which dart from many a star

Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;

The pluméd insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odor, 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 vapors of dim noontide, Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide,

In which every sound, and odor, and beam,

Move, as reeds in a single stream;

Each and all like ministering angels

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned

In an ocean of dreams without a sound; Whose waves never mark, tho' they ever impress

The light sand which paves it, conscious

ness;

(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 favorite, Cradled within the embrace of night.

PART SECOND

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.

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, Tho' the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

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;

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

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 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,

'Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past;

Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged 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.

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.

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,

I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odors there, In truth have never passed away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. 1820. 1820.

THE CLOUD

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when 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.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
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,

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle
motion,

This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea

Over the rills, and the crags, and the

hills,

Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile.

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.