The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 126

A Lady, the wonder of her kind, _5 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, _10 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 flus.h.i.+ng face Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, _15 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. _20

Her step seemed to pity the gra.s.s it pressed; You might hear by the heaving of her breast, That the coming and going of the wind Brought pleasure there and left pa.s.sion behind.

And wherever her aery footstep trod, _25 Her trailing hair from the gra.s.sy 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; _30 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 _35 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. _40

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 gra.s.ses and wild-flowers full, _45 The freshest her gentle hands could pull For the poor banished insects, whose intent, Although they did ill, was innocent.

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss _50 The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she Make her attendant angels be.

And many an antenatal tomb, Where b.u.t.terflies dream of the life to come, She left clinging round the smooth and dark _55 Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

This fairest creature from earliest Spring Thus moved through the garden ministering Mi the sweet season of Summertide, And ere the first leaf looked brown--she died! _60

NOTES: _15 morn Harvard ma.n.u.script, 1839; moon 1820.

_23 and going 1820; and the going Harvard ma.n.u.script, 1839.

_59 All 1820, 1839; Through all Harvard ma.n.u.script.

PART 3.

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.

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant _5 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 pa.s.sing death, _10 And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;

The dark gra.s.s, and the flowers among the gra.s.s, Were bright with tears as the crowd did pa.s.s; From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, _15 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 _20 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. _25

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 _30 The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Leaf by leaf, day after day, Were ma.s.sed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, _35 Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind pa.s.sed; 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, _40 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. _45

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Were bent and tangled across the walks; And the leafless network of parasite bowers Ma.s.sed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.

Between the time of the wind and the snow _50 All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coa.r.s.e 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, _55 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, p.r.i.c.kly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, _60 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! _65

Sp.a.w.n, weeds, and filth, a leprous sc.u.m, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, And at its outlet flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.

And hour by hour, when the air was still, _70 The vapours arose which have strength to kill; At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, At night they were darkness no star could melt.

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noonday _75 Unseen; every branch on which they alit By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, Wept, and the tears within each lid Of its folded leaves, which together grew, _80 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 As blood to a heart that will beat no more. _85

For Winter came: the wind was his whip: One choppy finger was on his lip: He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;

His breath was a chain which without a sound _90 The earth, and the air, and the water bound; He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.

Then the weeds which were forms of living death Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. _95 Their decay and sudden flight from frost Was but like the vanis.h.i.+ng of a ghost!

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant The moles and the dormice died for want: The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air _100 And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; Then there steamed up a freezing dew Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; _105

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child 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 _110 The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels, Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

CONCLUSION.

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, _115 Ere its outward form had known decay, Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that Lady's gentle mind, No longer with the form combined Which scattered love, as stars do light, _120 Found sadness, where it left delight,

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, _125