Poison Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, and blight Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, And at its outlet flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water snakes. 70 And hour by hour, when the air was still, At night they were darkness no star could And unctuous meteors from spray to spray The Sensitive Plant like one forbid 80 For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon For Winter came: the wind was his whip: 90 His breath was a chain which without a sound Then the weeds which were forms of living Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant bare. First there came down a thawing rain ΙΟΙ And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; And a northern whirlwind, wandering about And snapped them off with his rigid griff. When winter had gone and spring came back and darnels, III Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. Winter and death Death a mockery CONCLUSION Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Whether that Lady's gentle mind, I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet That garden sweet, that Lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, IO 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they. 20 For love, and beauty, and delight, A VISION OF THE SEA 'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the A study 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 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, of storm The ship Dim mirrors of ruin hang gleaming about; splits 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, 20 Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches The intense thunder-balls which are raining from heaven Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. 30 The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold, One deck is burst up by the waters below, And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sits on the other? Is that all the crew who lie burying each other, |