



16 The Poetry of Flowers. 

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie 
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, 
Then wander like spirits among the spheres, 
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ;— 
The quivering vapours of dim noon-tide, 
Which, like a sea, o’er the warm earth glide, 
In which every sound, and odour, and beam, 
Move as reeds in a single stream ;— 
Each and all like ministering angels were, 
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear ; 
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by, 
Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky. 
And when evening descended from heaven above, 
And the earth was all rest, and the air was all love, 
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 
And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep ; 
And the beasts and the birds and the insects were 
drowned 
In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; 
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress, 
The light sand which paves it—consciousness j 
Only overhead the sweet nightingale 
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail, 
And snatches of its Elysian chant 
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant ; 
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. 




























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