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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 vanishing 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

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, 130
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
‘Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might 135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

NOTES:
19 lovely Harvard manuscript, 1839; lively 1820.
23 of the morning 1820, 1839; of morning Harvard manuscript.
26 snow Harvard manuscript, 1839; now 1820.
28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan Harvard manuscript.
32 Leaf by leaf, day after day Harvard manuscript;
Leaf after leaf, day after day 1820;
Leaf after leaf, day by day 1839.
63 mist]mists Harvard manuscript.
96 and sudden flight]and their sudden flight the Harvard manuscript.
98 And under]Under Harvard manuscript.
114 Whether]And if Harvard manuscript.
118 Whether]Or if Harvard manuscript.