Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks, And the leafless net-work of parasite bowers Between the time of the wind and the snow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, Infecting the winds that wander by. Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, Dammed it up with roots knotted like water snakes. And hour by hour, when the air was still, The vapours arose which have strength to kill : And unctuous meteors from spray to spray The Sensitive Plant like one forbid For the leaves soon felt, and the branches soon, The sap shrank to the root through every pore As blood to a heart that will beat no more. For Winter came: the wind was his whip: 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 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, Then there steamed up a freezing dew And a northern whirlwind, wandering about When winter had gone and spring came back 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 I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet To own that death itself must be, That garden sweet, that lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never past away: 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, THE CLOUD. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 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, I sift the snow on the mountains below, 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, |