Floral Poetry. 
2 I I 
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about 
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 
Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff, 
And snapped them off with his rigid griff 
When Winter had gone and Spring came back, 
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; 
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels, 
Rose, like the dead, from their buried charnels. 
CONCLUSION. 
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that 
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, 
Ere its outward form had known decay, 
Now felt this change, I cannot say. 
Whether that lady’s gentle mind, 
No longer with the form combined, 
Which scattered love, as stars do light, 
Found sadness where it left delight, 
I dare not guess; but in this life 
Of error, ignorance, and strife, 
Where nothing is, but all things seem, 
And we the shadows of the dream. 
It is a modest creed, and yet 
Pleasant, if one considers it, 
To own that death itself must be, 
Like all the rest, a mockery. 
That garden sweet, that lady fair, 
And all sweet shapes and odours there, 
In truth, have never passed away; 
’Tis we, ’tis ours are changed—not they. 
