When fairly run down, the fox yields up his HOW poor, how rich, how abject, how breath, The high-mettled racer is in at the death. august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man, Grown aged, used up, and turned out of the Dim miniature of greatness absolute, An heir of glory, a frail child of dust, Lame, spavined and wind-galled, but yet Helpless immortal, insect infinite, with some blood, A worm, a God! EDWARD YOUNG. From the turf, like the voice and the instru- Grew in that garden in perfect prime. Whom youth makes so fair and passion so And starry river-buds glimmered by ; pale That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green; And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss across, For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; It loves even like Love-its deep heart is Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells The light winds which from unsustaining As fair as the fabulous asphodels, wings And flowerets which, drooping as day drooped Shed the music of many murmurings; When heaven's blithe winds had unfolded Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides With the light and the odor its neighbor In which every sound and odor and beam shed, Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, Move as reeds in a single stream,— Each and all like ministering angels were Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmo- For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, sphere. Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by And when evening descended from heaven above, And the earth was all rest and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep; And the beasts and the birds and the insects | Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound, Whose waves never mark though they ever impress The light sand which paves it, consciousness (Only overhead the sweet nightingale Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, And snatches of its elysian chant Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant), The Sensitive Plant was the earliest PART II. THERE was a power in this sweet place, Was as God is to the starry scheme. A Lady, the wonder of her kind, motion She sprinkled bright water from the stream Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, On those that were faint with the sunny Tended the garden from morn to even; beam, And out of the cups of the heavy flowers She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers. She lifted their heads with her tender hands, Laughed round her footsteps up from the earth. And sustained them with rods and osier She had no companion of mortal race, bands; If the flowers had been her own infants, she But her tremulous breath and her flushing face Could never have nursed them more tenderly. |