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QUEEN MAB.

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLE Y.

Landon:

QUEEN MAB.

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon

With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean's wave

It blushes o'er the world :
Yet both so passing wonderful !

Hath then the gloomy Power
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres

Seized on her sinless soul ?

Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline, which is fair

As breathing marble, perish?

Must putrefaction's breath
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight

But loathsomeness and ruin?
• Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,
On which the lightest heart might moralise?
Or is it only a sweet slumber

Stealing o'er sensation,
Which the breath of roseate morning

Chaseth into darkness?

Will Ianthe wake again,
And give that faithful bosom joy
Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
Light, life, and rapture from her smile?