The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (ed. Hutchinson, 1914)/Cancelled Passage (from The Sensitive Plant)

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

CANCELLED PASSAGE

[This stanza followed III. 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was omitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards. It is cancelled in the Harvard MS.]

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.