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Home  »  The Book of Sorrow  »  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916.

From ‘The Daemon of the world’

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

From ‘Queen Mab

HOW wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!

One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,

With lips of lurid blue,

The other glowing like the vital morn,

When throned on ocean’s wave

It breathes over the world:

Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!…

Human eye hath ne’er beheld

A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,

As that which o’er the maiden’s charmèd sleep

Waving a starry wand,

Hung like a mist of light.

Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds

Of waking spring arose,

Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky….