Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=478337" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Sensitive Plant</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">PART 1.<br>A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,<br>And the young winds fed it with silver dew,<br>And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.<br>And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the Spring arose on the garden fair,<br>Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;<br>And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast<br>Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But none ever trembled and panted with bliss<br>In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, <br>Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,<br>As the companionless Sensitive Plant.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The snowdrop, and then the violet,<br>Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,<br>And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent<br>From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,<br>And narcissi, the fairest among them all,<br>Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,<br>Till they die of their own dear loveliness;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,<br>Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale<br>That the light of its tremulous bells is seen<br>Through their pavilions of tender green;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,<br>Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew<br>Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,<br>It was felt like an odour within the sense;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,<br>Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, <br>Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air<br>The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,<br>As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,<br>Till the fiery star, which is its eye,<br>Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,<br>The sweetest flower for scent that blows;<br>And all rare blossoms from every clime<br>Grew in that garden in perfect prime.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And on the stream whose inconstant bosom<br>Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,<br>With golden and green light, slanting through<br>Their heaven of many a tangled hue,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,<br>And starry river-buds glimmered by,<br>And around them the soft stream did glide and dance<br>With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,<br>Which led through the garden along and across,<br>Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,<br>Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells<br>As fair as the fabulous asphodels,<br>And flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too,<br>Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,<br>To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And from this undefiled Paradise<br>The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes<br>Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet<br>Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,<br>As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,<br>Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one<br>Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For each one was interpenetrated<br>With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,<br>Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear<br>Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit <br>Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,<br>Received more than all, it loved more than ever,<br>Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;<br>Radiance and odour are not its dower;<br>It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,<br>It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The light winds which from unsustaining wings<br>Shed the music of many murmurings;<br>The beams which dart from many a star<br>Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The plumed insects swift and free,<br>Like golden boats on a sunny sea,<br>Laden with light and odour, which pass<br>Over the gleam of the living grass;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie<br>Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,<br>Then wander like spirits among the spheres,<br>Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The quivering vapours of dim noontide, <br>Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,<br>In which every sound, and odour, and beam,<br>Move, as reeds in a single stream;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Each and all like ministering angels were<br>For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,<br>Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by<br>Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when evening descended from Heaven above,<br>And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,<br>And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,<br>And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned<br>In an ocean of dreams without a sound;<br>Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress<br>The light sand which paves it, consciousness; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">(Only overhead the sweet nightingale<br>Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,<br>And snatches of its Elysian chant<br>Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Sensitive Plant was the earliest <br>Upgathered into the bosom of rest;<br>A sweet child weary of its delight,<br>The feeblest and yet the favourite,<br>Cradled within the embrace of Night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PART 2.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There was a Power in this sweet place,<br>An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace<br>Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,<br>Was as God is to the starry scheme.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A Lady, the wonder of her kind,<br>Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind<br>Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion<br>Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tended the garden from morn to even:<br>And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,<br>Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,<br>Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She had no companion of mortal race,<br>But her tremulous breath and her flushing face<br>Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,<br>That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake<br>Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,<br>As if yet around her he lingering were,<br>Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;<br>You might hear by the heaving of her breast,<br>That the coming and going of the wind<br>Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And wherever her aery footstep trod,<br>Her trailing hair from the grassy sod<br>Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,<br>Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet<br>Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;<br>I doubt not they felt the spirit that came<br>From her glowing fingers through all their frame.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She sprinkled bright water from the stream<br>On those that were faint with the sunny beam;<br>And out of the cups of the heavy flowers <br>She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She lifted their heads with her tender hands,<br>And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;<br>If the flowers had been her own infants, she<br>Could never have nursed them more tenderly. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And all killing insects and gnawing worms,<br>And things of obscene and unlovely forms,<br>She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,<br>Into the rough woods far aloof,--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full, <br>The freshest her gentle hands could pull<br>For the poor banished insects, whose intent,<br>Although they did ill, was innocent.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris<br>Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss<br>The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she<br>Make her attendant angels be.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And many an antenatal tomb,<br>Where butterflies dream of the life to come,<br>She left clinging round the smooth and dark<br>Edge of the odorous cedar bark.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This fairest creature from earliest Spring<br>Thus moved through the garden ministering<br>Mi the sweet season of Summertide,<br>And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">PART 3.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three days the flowers of the garden fair,<br>Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,<br>Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous<br>She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant<br>Felt the sound of the funeral chant,<br>And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,<br>And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The weary sound and the heavy breath,<br>And the silent motions of passing death,<br>And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,<br>Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,<br>Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;<br>From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, <br>And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,<br>Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,<br>Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,<br>Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap <br>To make men tremble who never weep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,<br>And frost in the mist of the morning rode,<br>Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,<br>Mocking the spoil of the secret night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,<br>Paved the turf and the moss below.<br>The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,<br>Like the head and the skin of a dying man.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Indian plants, of scent and hue<br>The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,<br>Leaf by leaf, day after day,<br>Were massed into the common clay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,<br>And white with the whiteness of what is dead, <br>Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;<br>Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,<br>Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,<br>Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem, <br>Which rotted into the earth with them.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The water-blooms under the rivulet<br>Fell from the stalks on which they were set;<br>And the eddies drove them here and there,<br>As the winds did those of the upper air.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks<br>Were bent and tangled across the walks;<br>And the leafless network of parasite bowers<br>Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Between the time of the wind and the snow <br>All loathliest weeds began to grow,<br>Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,<br>Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,<br>And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,<br>Stretched out its long and hollow shank,<br>And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,<br>Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,<br>Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,<br>Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould<br>Started like mist from the wet ground cold;<br>Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead<br>With a spirit of growth had been animated! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,<br>Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,<br>And at its outlet flags huge as stakes<br>Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And hour by hour, when the air was still,<br>The vapours arose which have strength to kill;<br>At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,<br>At night they were darkness no star could melt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And unctuous meteors from spray to spray<br>Crept and flitted in broad noonday <br>Unseen; every branch on which they alit<br>By a venomous blight was burned and bit.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,<br>Wept, and the tears within each lid<br>Of its folded leaves, which together grew,<br>Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon<br>By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;<br>The sap shrank to the root through every pore<br>As blood to a heart that will beat no more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For Winter came: the wind was his whip:<br>One choppy finger was on his lip:<br>He had torn the cataracts from the hills<br>And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">His breath was a chain which without a sound<br>The earth, and the air, and the water bound;<br>He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne<br>By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then the weeds which were forms of living death<br>Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.<br>Their decay and sudden flight from frost<br>Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant<br>The moles and the dormice died for want:<br>The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air<br>And were caught in the branches naked and bare.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">First there came down a thawing rain<br>And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;<br>Then there steamed up a freezing dew<br>Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And a northern whirlwind, wandering about<br>Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,<br>Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,<br>And snapped them off with his rigid griff.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When Winter had gone and Spring came back<br>The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;<br>But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,<br>Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">CONCLUSION.<br>Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that<br>Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, <br>Ere its outward form had known decay,<br>Now felt this change, I cannot say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,<br>No longer with the form combined<br>Which scattered love, as stars do light,<br>Found sadness, where it left delight,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I dare not guess; but in this life<br>Of error, ignorance, and strife,<br>Where nothing is, but all things seem,<br>And we the shadows of the dream,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is a modest creed, and yet<br>Pleasant if one considers it,<br>To own that death itself must be,<br>Like all the rest, a mockery.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That garden sweet, that lady fair,<br>And all sweet shapes and odours there,<br>In truth have never passed away:<br>’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For love, and beauty, and delight,<br>There is no death nor change: their might <br>Exceeds our organs, which endure<br>No light, being themselves obscure.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Percy+Bysshe+Shelley">Percy Bysshe Shelley</a><div class=q>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=478337" data-title="The Sensitive Plant de Percy Bysshe Shelley" data-description="PART 1.
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love ..."></div>
</div>
</div>