Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
Folded in cells of crystal silence there.”
* * * * *
A few stanzas later, and we come to the idea of the strange seed, which was wrapt in mould, and watered all the summer with sweet dew. At length:
“The plant grew strong and green—the sunny flower
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance.”
This brings us as near, I imagine, to the idea of The Sensitive Plant as we are likely to find ourselves in any other most Shelleyan region of his poetry. The lines recur persistently to the mind in reading the later poem; and almost as suggestively is it haunted by one passage at least in the “Defence,” which speaks with a sort of aerial eloquence of a Poetry whose art it is to arrest “the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters abide.”