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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 | 5 |
| When, throned on ocean’s wave, | |
| It blushes o’er the world: | |
| Yet both so passing wonderful! | |
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| Hath then the gloomy Power, | |
| Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| That lovely outline, which is fair | |
| As breathing marble, perish? | |
| Must putrefaction’s breath | |
| Leave nothing of this heavenly sight | |
| But loathsomeness and ruin? | 20 |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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? | 30 |
| |
| 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, | 35 |
| 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: | 40 |
| Her golden tresses shade | |
| The bosom’s stainless pride, | |
| Curling like tendrils of the parasite | |
| Around a marble column. * * * * * | |
| A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame: | 45 |
| Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed; | |
| Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained. | |
| She looked around in wonder, and beheld | |
| Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, | |
| Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, | 50 |
| And the bright-beaming stars | |
| That through the casement shone. | |
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