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I.

QUEEN MAB.

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 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

B

The genii of the breezes sweep: Those lines of rainbow light

Are like the moonbeams when they fall
Through some cathedral window, but the teints
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 ethereal car,
Long did she gaze, and silently,

Upon the slumbering maid.

Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,
When silveryclouds float through the wildered brain,
When every sight of lovely, wild and grand,
Astonishes, enraptures, elevates-
When fancy at a glance combines
The wond'rous 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 sleeping maid.

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 look'd 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; yon fibrous cloud,
That catches but the palest tinge of even,

And which the straining eye can hardly seize
When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,
Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star
That gems the glittering coronet of morn,
Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,
Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,

Yet with an undulating motion,
Swayed to her outline gracefully.

From her celestial car
The Fairy Queen descended,
And thrice she waved her wand
Circled with wreaths of amaranth :
Her thin and misty form
Moved with the moving air,
And the clear silver tones,
As thus she spoke, were such
As are unheard by all but gifted ear.

FAIRY.

Stars! your balmiest influence shed! Elements! your wrath suspend ! Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds

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Upon the couch the body lay,
Wrapt 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 self-same 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 dived so deep; Spirit! who hast soar'd 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 ecstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,

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