Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/620

His breath was a chain which without a sound 90
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 frost to the earth beneath. 95
Their decay and sudden flight^[1] from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!

And under^[2] the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air 100
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; 105

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 110
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

Conclusion
Whether^[3] the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, 115
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt tins change, I cannot say.

Whether^[4] that Lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light, 120
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, 125

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.

1. 96 and sudden flight] and their sudden flight the Harvard MS.
2. 98 And under] Under Harvard MS.
3. 114 Whether] And if Harvard MS.
4. 118 Whether] Or if Harvard MS.