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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 pillowd:
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:

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