QUEEN MAB.

I.

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 that divinest 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 moralize? 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?

Yes! she will wake again,

Although her glowing limbs are motionless,
And silent those sweet lips,

Once breathing eloquence

That might have soothed a tiger's rage,
Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.
Her dewy eyes are closed,

And on their lids, whose texture fine
Scarce hides the dark-blue orbs beneath,
The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

The bosom's stainless pride, Curling like tendrils of the parasite

Around a marble column.

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,
Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!!
Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;
Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,
And stop obedient to the reins of light.

These the Queen of Spells drew in;
She spread a charm around the spot;
And, leaning graceful from the etherial car,
Long did she gaze and silently

Upon the slumbering maid.

Human eye hath ne'er beheld 2

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.

The broad and yellow moon

Shone dimly through her form-
That form of faultless symmetry;
The pearly and pellucid car

Moved not the moonlight's line.
'Twas not an earthly pageant.

Those who had looked upon the sight,

Passing all human glory,
Saw not the yellow moon,
Saw not the mortal scene,-
Heard not the night-wind's rush,
Heard not an earthly sound;
Saw but the fairy pageant,—
Heard but the heavenly strains

That filled the lonely dwelling.

The Fairy's frame was slight; slight as some cloud That catches but the palest tinge of day

When evening yields to night,—

Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue

Its transitory robe.

Her thin and misty form

Moved with the moving air;

Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds 2
Of wakening Spring arose,
Filling the chamber and the midnight sky.

"Maiden, the world's supremest Spirit 3
Beneath the shadow of her wings
Folds all thy memory doth inherit
From ruin of divinest things,-
Feelings that lure thee to betray,
And light of thoughts that pass away.

"For thou hast earned a mighty boon;
The truths which wisest poets see
Dimly, thy mind may make its own,
Rewarding its own majesty,
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 ;
For dark and cold mortality

A living light, to cheer it long
The watchfires of the world among.

"Therefore, from Nature's inner shrine,
Where gods and fiends in worship bend,
Majestic Spirit, be it thine

The flame to size, the veil to rend,
Where the vast snake Eternity
In charmed sleep doth ever lie.

"All that inspires thy voice of love,
Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,

Or through thy frame doth burn and move,
Or think or feel, awake, arise!

Spirit, leave, for mine and me,
Earth's unsubstantial mimicry!"

It ceased

and from the mute and moveless frame

A radiant Spirit rose,

All beautiful in naked purity.

Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,
Each stain of earthliness

Had passed away; it reassumed
Its native dignity, and stood
Immortal amid ruin.

Upon the couch the body lay,

Wrapped in the depth of slumber.

Its features were fixed and meaningless;
Yet animal life was there,

And every organ yet performed

Its natural functions. 'Twas a sight

Of wonder to behold the body and Soul.
The selfsame lineaments, the same
Marks of identity, were there;

Yet oh how different! One aspires to heaven,
Pants for its sempiternal heritage,

And, ever-changing, ever-rising still,

Wantons in endless being.

The other, for a time the unwilling sport
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;
Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
Then, like a useless and worn-out machine,
Rots, perishes, and passes.

Fairy. Spirit who hast clived so deep,
Spirit who hast soared so, high,

Thou the fearless, thou the mild,

Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,—
Ascend the car with me.

Spirit. Do I dream? Is this new feeling
But a visioned ghost of slumber?

If indeed I am a Soul,

A free, a disembodied Soul,

Speak again to me.

Fairy. I am the Fairy Mab. To me 'tis given
The wonders of the human world to keep.
The secrets of the immeasurable past
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern unflattering chroniclers, I find.
The future, from the causes which arise
In each event, I gather. Not the sting
Which retributive memory implants
In the hard bosom of the selfish man,
Nor that exstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
Are unforeseen, unregistered, by me :
And it is yet permitted me to rend
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
For which it hath its being, and may taste
That peace which in the end all life will share.
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,

Ascend the car with me!

The chains of earth's immurement
Fell from Janthe's Spirit ;

They shrank and brake like bandages of straw
Beneath a wakened giant's strength.

She knew her glorious change,

And felt in apprehension uncontrolled
New raptures opening round:

Each day-dream of her mortal life,