THIRD PART

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 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 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 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.

And Indian plants, of scent and hue 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 grey, 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 wingèd 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.

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.

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

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, 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, 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!

Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake, Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, Infecting the winds that wander by.

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, 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, 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 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 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.

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 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: 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.