QUEEN MAB.

I.

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