QUEEN MAB. TO HARRIETT SHELLEY. WHOSE is the love that, gleaming through the world, Whose is the warm and partial praise, Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Then press into thy breast this pledge of love; It consecrates to thine. QUEEN MAB. 1. How wonderful is Death- 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 Must that divinest form, Which love and admiration cannot view As breathing marble, perish? A Must putrefaction's breath On which the lightest heart might moralize? Which the breath of roseate morning Chaseth into darkness? And give that faithful bosom joy Light, life, and rapture, from her smile? Yes! she will wake again, Although her glowing limbs are motionless, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger's rage, And on their lids, whose texture fine Her golden tresses shade The bosom's stainless pride, Curling like tendrils of the parasite Around a marble column. Hark! whence that rushing sound? 'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps Around a lonely ruin, When west winds sigh, and evening waves respond In whispers from the shore; 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves The genii of the breezes sweep. Floating on waves of music and of light, These the Queen of Spells drew in; Human eye hath ne'er beheld A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful, As that which o'er the maiden's charmed sleep, Waving a starry wand, Hung like a mist of light. Moved not the moonlight's line. The Fairy's frame was slight; slight as some cloud When evening yields to night, Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue Her thin and misty form Moved with the moving air; Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds Of wakening Spring arose, Filling the chamber and the midnight sky. "Maiden, the world's supremest Spirit Entranced in some diviner mood Of self-oblivious solitude. "Custom and faith and power thou spurnest, From hate and awe thy heart is free; Ardent and pure as day thou burnest; "Therefore, from Nature's inner shrine, The flame to seize,—the veil to rend, |