PITCHER-PLANT. 



SARRACENIA PURPUREA L. 



DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale 



Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, 



Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, 



Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, 



Still as the silence round about his lair; 



Forest on forest hung about his head 



Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 



Not so much life as on a summer's day 



Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass, 



But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 



A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more 



By reason of his fallen divinity 



Spreading a shade. The Naiad 'mid her reeds 



Pressed her cold finger closer to her lips. 



Along the margin-sand large footmarks went, 



No further than to where his feet had strayed, 



And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 



His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 



Unsceptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; 



While his bowed head seemed listening to the Earth, 



His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. 



Keats. 



THIS incomparable picture of a swampy vale deep in the 

 woods, is so exactly like the native home of our purple Pitcher- 



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