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 noon-day
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.

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 past 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.

Last Love Poems.

TO EDWARD WILLIAMS.

THE serpent is shut out from paradise.

The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
In which its heart-cure lies:

The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
Like that from which its mate with feignèd sighs
Fled in the April hour.

I too must seldom seek again Near happy friends a mitigated pain.

Of hatred I am proud,-with scorn content; Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown Itself indifferent.

But, not to speak of love, pity alone Can break a spirit already more than bent. The miserable one

Turns the mind's poison into food,Its medicine is tears,—its evil good.

Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,

Dear friends, dear friend! know that I only fly
Your looks, because they stir

Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot
die :

The very comfort that they minister
I scarce can bear, yet I,

So deeply is the arrow gone,

Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.

When I return to my cold home, you ask
Why I am not as I have ever been.

You spoil me for the task

Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,— Of wearing on my brow the idle mask

Of author, great or mean,

In the world's carnival.

I sought

Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.

Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot

With various flowers, and every one still said, "She loves me- -loves me not."

And if this meant a vision long since fled-If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought— If it meant, but I dread

To speak what you may know too well: Still there was truth in the sad oracle.

The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home; No bird so wild but has its quiet nest, When it no more would roam;

The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam, And thus at length find rest.

Doubtless there is a place of peace

Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease.