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 net-work 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,
Stretch'd 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!

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.

CONCLUSION.

WHETHER the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, 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,
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,

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,
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
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

A VISION OF THE SEA.

"Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,

And when lightning is loosed like a deluge from heaven,

She sees the black trunks of the water-spouts spin, And bend, as if heaven was ruining in,

Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible

mass

As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass

To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,

And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,

Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed Through the low trailing rack of the tempest, is lost

In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep

Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the
gale,

Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing
iron,

With splendour and terror the black ship environ;

Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire [fire,
The pyramid-billows, with white points of brine,
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.

The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast

Of the whirlwind that stript it of branches has past.

The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven

Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven.

The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,

Like a corpse on the clay which is hung'ring to fold

Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,

One deck is burst up from the waters below,
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes

blow

O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other? Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast! Are those

Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold)

Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,

The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating Are these all?

[plank?

O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn, With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast

Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast

Down the deep, which closed on them above and around,

And the sharks and the dog-fish their grave-clothes unbound,

And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down

From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,
But seven remained. Six the thunder had smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has
written

His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck

An oak splinter pierced through his breast and his back,

And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.

S

No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair Than heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,

It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee, It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder

Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,
It would play with those eyes where the radiance
of fear

Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye;
Whilst its mother's is lustreless.
"Smile not, my

child, But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be, So dreadful since thou must divide it with me! Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,

Will it rock thee not, infant? "Tis beating with dread!

Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we, That when the ship sinks we no longer may be? What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?

To be after life what we have been before? [eyes, Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day,

Have so long called my child, but which now fades away

Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?"

Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, past, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world

Which, based on the sea and to heaven upcurled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:

And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has past,

Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where

The wind has burst out through the chasm, from

the air

Of clear morning, the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate.

And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings,
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
And over head glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves
behold,

The deep calm of blue heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still by the presence of
Love,

Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven's
azure smile,

The wide world of waters is vibrating.

Where

Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray [battle
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the
Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the
rattle

Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the
veins,

Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash

As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thunder! the

screams

And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth oceanstreams,

Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother,
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of
thought

Urge on the keen keel, the brine foams. At the stern
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets

burn

In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,
'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone,
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously,
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death,
Fear,

Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere, Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread

Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,

Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring: so smiled

The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother

The child and the ocean still smile on each other, Whilst

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast ;
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,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

III.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

IV.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn ;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,

When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,

Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.

V.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone,
And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,

Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its colunins be.

The triumphal arch through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow,

When the powers of the air are chained to my
Is the million-coloured bow;
[chair,
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.

Like a star of heaven,

In the broad day-light