104 
Sensitive Plant. 
“For each was interpenetrated 
With the light and odour its neighbour shed, 
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, 
Wrapped and filled with their mutual atmosphere. 
“But the sensitive plant, which could give small fruit 
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, 
y Received more than all, it loved more than ever, 
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver— 
“For the sensitive plant has no bright flower; 
Radiance and odour are not its dower; 
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full. 
It desires what it has not—the beautiful! 
“The sensitive plant was the earliest 
Upgathered into the bosom of rest; 
A sweet child weary of its delight. 
The feeblest and yet the favourite, 
Cradled within the embrace of night.” 
The sad ending of “this strange eventful history” who 
knows not? How the lady who was the “ruling grace” of 
this sweet garden, “ere the first leaf looked brown ’neath 
Autumn’s kisses, passed from this life away,” and how the 
neglected flowers faded, “ leaf after leaf, day by day, until ail 
were massed into the common clay” ? while 
“The sensitive plant, like one forbid, 
Wept, and the tears within each lid 
Of its folded leaves which together grew. 
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. 
“For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn; 
The sap shrank to the root through every pore. 
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.” 
And finally 
“When Winter had gone and Spring came back, 
The sensitive plant was a leafless wreck. ” 
Heaven guard the human sensitive plant from such a fate ? 
Shelley only dowers the subject of his verse with love, 
and denies it odour as well as beauty; but travellers affirm 
that in Brazil, where it is common, it grows to a size almost 
colossal, and diffuses a most delicious perfume. Dr. Clarke 
says that frankincense, that most fragrant of odours, is the 
product of the Egyptian mimosa. The acanthus-tree spoken 
of by Theophrastus and Virgil is supposed to be a species of 
this latter mimosa. 
