In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, 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 All the sweet season of summer tide, And ere the first leaf looked brown-she died! PART III. 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 sat 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 The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, 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 Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, 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, 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, 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! Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 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 For Winter came. The wind was his whip; His breath was a chain which without a sound 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 And under the roots of the Sensitive-Plant bare. |