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, 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, I dare not guess; but in this life It is a modest creed, and yet To own that death itself must be, 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 Fiordispina HE season was the childhood of sweet June, Whose sunny hours from morning until noon Went creeping through the day with silent feet, For thou the wonders of the depth canst know bowers They were two cousins, almost like to twins, Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had raised their love-which could not be But by dissevering their nativity. And so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather clime the same Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see All those who love-and who e'er loved like thee, Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo, Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardours of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture. He faints, dissolved into a sea of love; Had not brought forth this morn—your wed ding-day. |