Page:Queen Mab (Shelley).djvu/9




 * 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