Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than the great.  He believed that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side.  He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs.  He wrote a few; but, in those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed.  They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home to the direct point of injury—­that oppression is detestable as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance.  Besides these outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph:  such is the scope of the “Ode to the Assertors of Liberty”.  He sketched also a new version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.

***

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820.

THE SENSITIVE PLANT.

[Composed at Pisa, early in 1820 (dated ‘March, 1820,’ in Harvard manuscript), and published, with “Prometheus Unbound”, the same year:  included in the Harvard College manuscript book.  Reprinted in the “Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions.]

PART 1.

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.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 5
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 10
Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.

The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent 15
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness; 20

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 25
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;