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 grasses and wild flowers full,
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

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. She left clinging round the smooth and dark Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

This fairest Creature from earliest Spring Thus moved through the garden ministering All the sweet season of summer-tide;

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,
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 rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and
bright,

Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

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;

PART III.

THREE days the flowers of the garden fair
Like stars when the moon is awakened were,
Or the waves of Baiæ ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

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 sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf after 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 passed;
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.

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,
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;

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,

The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels

Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

A palace and a prison on each hand;

I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand

Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land

Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles,

The pleasant place of all festivity, The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy.

But unto us she hath a spell beyond
Her name in story and her long array
Of mighty shadows whose dim forms despond
Above the dogeless city's vanished sway;
Ours is a trophy which will not decay
With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor,
And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn

away

The keystones of the arch: though all were o'er,