The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set; And the eddies drove them here and there, As the winds did those of the upper air. LV Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Were bent and tangled across the walks; And the leafless network of parasite bowers Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers. LVI Between the time of the wind and the snow, All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back. [Illustration] LVII And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, Stretched out its long and hollow shank, And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. LVIII And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. LIX And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated! LX Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake, Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, Infecting the winds that wander by. LXI Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, And at its outlet flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes. LXII And hour by hour, when the air was still, The vapours arose which have strength to kill: At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, At night they were darkness no star could melt. LXIII And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noonday Unseen; every branch on which they alit By a venomous blight was burned and bit. LXIV 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. [Illustration] LXV 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. LXVI 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. LXVII 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 LXVIII Then the weeds which were forms of living death, Fled from the frost to the earth beneath: Their decay and sudden flight from frost Was but like the vanishing of a ghost! LXIX