Page:Queen Mab (Shelley).djvu/90

84 In nature's primal modesty arose, And with undoubting confidence disclosed The growing longings of its dawning love, Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. No longer prostitution's venomed bane Poisoned the springs of happiness and life; Woman and man, in confidence and love, Equal, and free, and pure, together trod The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.

Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw Year after year their stones upon the field, Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear.

Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung: It were a sight of awfulness to see The works of faith and slavery, so vast, So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal! Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.