THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD.

     Nec tantum prodere vati,
     Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam
     Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.
     LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.

       How wonderful is Death,
       Death and his brother Sleep!
     One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,
       With lips of lurid blue,
     The other glowing like the vital morn,                        5
       When throned on ocean's wave
       It breathes over the world:
     Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

     Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
     Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,                    10
     To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne
     Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,
     Which love and admiration cannot view
     Without a beating heart, whose azure veins
     Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,               15
     Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
     In light of some sublimest mind, decay?
       Nor putrefaction's breath
     Leave aught of this pure spectacle
       But loathsomeness and ruin?—                               20
       Spare aught but a dark theme,
     On which the lightest heart might moralize?
     Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers
     Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids
       To watch their own repose?                                 25
       Will they, when morning's beam
       Flows through those wells of light,
     Seek far from noise and day some western cave,
     Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds
       A lulling murmur weave?—                                   30
       Ianthe doth not sleep
       The dreamless sleep of death:
     Nor in her moonlight chamber silently
     Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,
       Or mark her delicate cheek                                 35
     With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,
       Outwatching weary night,
       Without assured reward.
       Her dewy eyes are closed;
     On their translucent lids, whose texture fine                40
     Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below
       With unapparent fire,
       The baby Sleep is pillowed:
       Her golden tresses shade
       The bosom's stainless pride,                               45
     Twining like tendrils of the parasite
       Around a marble column.

       Hark! whence that rushing sound?
       'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps
       Around a lonely ruin                                       50