Sensitive Plant. 
103 
Matthew Prior alludes to the diversity of opinion as to what 
causes this phenomenon : 
“ Whence does it happen that the plant, which well 
We name the ‘sensitive,’ should move and feel? 
Whence know her leaves to answer her command, 
And with quick horror fly the neighbouring hand?” 
Darwin, the author of the “ Loves of the Plants,” endea¬ 
voured to account for the strange dislike this plant exhibits to 
the touch of foreign objects ; but his explanations were not 
very convincing. His lines upon another of its habits, that of 
contracting towards evening and expanding when morning 
dawns, are more alluring : 
“Weak, with nice sense, the chaste mimosa stands; 
From each rude touch withdraws her timid hands. 
Oft, as light clouds pass o’er the Summer’s glade, 
Alarm’d, she trembles at the moving shade, 
And feels alive through all her tender form 
The whisper’d murmurs of the gathering storm; 
Shuts her sweet eyelids to approaching night, 
And hails with freshen’d charms the rosy light.” 
There is one most remarkable member of this extraordinary 
family, known as the “friendly-tree,” which droops its branches 
whenever any person approaches it, seeming as if it saluted 
those who sought retreat beneath its sheltering boughs. Moore 
calls it “ That courteous tree, 
Which bows to all who seek its canopy.” 
Shelley’s sweet characteristic poem of “The Sensitive Plant ” 
is well known ; but a few of its blossoms will not lose aught 
of their ethereal grace by reproduction here: 
“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, 
And the spirit of love fell everywhere; 
And each flower and herb on earth’s dark breast 
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. 
“ But none ever trembled and panted with bliss, 
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 
Like a doe in the noontide, with love’s sweet want, 
As the companionless sensitive plant. 
