210 
Floral Poetry. 
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. 
For Winter came : the wind was his whip, 
One choppy finger was on his lip ; 
He had torn the cataracts from the hills, 
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles. 
His breath was a chain, which, without a sound, 
The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; 
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot throne 
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone. 
Then the weeds, which were forms of living death, 
Fled from the frosts to the earth beneath ; 
Their decay and sudden flight from frost 
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost! 
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant 
The moles and the dormice died for want; 
And the birds dropped stiff from the frozen air, 
And were caught in the branches naked and bare. 
First there came down a thawing rain, 
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again ; 
Then there steamed up a freezing dew, 
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; 
