Sensitive Plant...

 from the SENSITIVE PLANT by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
 Sweet peas just starting to bloom. Not as tall as they should be this year ( too cold a spring?)  but here, just the same.....

 A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew,

And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.

And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.

 The snowdrop, and then the violet,

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,

 And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,

The sweetest flower for scent that blows;

And all rare blossoms from every climb

4           Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

 When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,

As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,

 Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one , shared joy in the light of the gentle sun.

6          

 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,

 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.

 There was a Power in this sweet place,

An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace

 Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,

Was as God is to the starry scheme.

 In 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, while the lagging hours of the day went by like windless clouds o'er a tender sky....

Photographs 2017. Shelley poem excerpt from "1000 beautiful Things" (1948). The original poem is oodles longer than these few excerpts. Goes through all the seasons and the text is divided into 3 parts and about 310 lines or so. Worth a read!