THE POETICAL WORKS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. TO HARRIET WHOSE is the love that, gleaming through the world, Whose is the warm and partial praise, Virtue's most sweet reward? Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow? Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, And loved mankind the more? Harriet! on thine :-thou wert my purer mind; Thine are these early wilding flowers, Then press into thy breast this pledge of love, It consecrates to thine. QUEEN MAB. I. How wonderful is Death, The other, rosy as the morn B 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? Leave nothing of this heavenly sight Which the breath of roseate morning Will Ianthe wake again, And give that faithful bosom joy Yes! she will wake again, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger's rage, And on their lids, whose texture fine The bosom's stainless pride, Curling like tendrils of the parasite Hark! whence that rushing sound! 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 Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen! Upon the slumbering maid. Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams, As that which reined the coursers of the air, The broad and yellow moon Moved not the moonlight's line: Saw not the yellow moon, Saw not the mortal scene, Heard not the night-wind's rush, Saw but the fairy pageant, Heard but the heavenly strains That filled the lonely dwelling. The Fairy's frame was slight; yon fibrous cloud, Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, From her celestial car The Fairy Queen descended, And thrice she waved her wand Fairy. Stars! your balmiest influence shed! Let not a breath be seen to stir Soul of Ianthe thou, Judged alone worthy of the envied boon That waits the good and the sincere; that waits Those who have struggled, and with resolute will Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains, The day-stars of their age;-Soul of Ianthe! Sudden arose Ianthe's Soul; it stood All beautiful in naked purity, The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. Had passed away, it reassumed Upon the couch the body lay, And every organ yet performed Yet, oh how different! One aspires to heaven, And ever-changing, ever-rising still, Wantons in endless being. The other, for a time the unwilling sport G |