Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/785

§I 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 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.

Hark! whence that rushing sound?

'Tis like the wondrous strain

That round a lonely ruin swells,

Which, wandering on the echoing shore,

The enthusiast hears at evening:

'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh;

'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes

Of that strange lyre whose strings

The genii of the breezes sweep:

Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall

Through some cathedral window, but the tints

Are such as may not find

Comparison on earth.

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 aethereal car,

Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid.

Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,

When silvery clouds float through the 'wildered brain,

When every sight of lovely, wild and grand

Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,

When fancy at a glance combines

The wondrous and the beautiful,—

So bright, so fair, so wild a shape

Hath ever yet beheld,

As that which reined the coursers of the air,

And poured the magic of her gaze

Upon the maiden's sleep.

The broad and yellow moon

Shone dimly through her form—