“The Great Master of Ideal Mimicry”

Abstract

In “The Sensitive Plant,” Percy Bysshe Shelley’s allegory of death, renewal, and perception, Shelley posits a world of perfect expression, where things can express their essence through their very bodies. The breath of the snowdrop and the violet is their “voice and … instrument” (1.16); the “sweet peal” of the hyacinth “was felt like an odour within the sense” (1.26, 28); the rose “unveiled the depth of her glowing breast” until “[t]he soul of her beauty and love lay bare” (1.30, 32); the stream “did glide and dance / With a motion of sweet sound and radiance” (1.47–48); and even the lady’s “form was upborne by a lovely mind / Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion, / Like a sea- flower unfolded beneath the Ocean” (2.6–8). Each “[s]hared joy” (1.65) because “each one was interpenetrated / With the light and the odour its neighbor shed” (1.66–67). All, that is, except for the sensitive plant. Even though it “[r]eceived more than all” and “loved more than ever” (1.73), it “has no bright flower; / Radiance and odour are not its dower” (1.74–75). Everything in the garden— nature, plant, and human— expresses the love within it by the very frame of its body. Only the sensitive plant, which “loves— even like Love” (1.76), has no capacity to express.