| 332 THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA
No writhed muscle--no distorted cheek—
Deform'd the beautiful picture of repose,
Or spoke the unequal struggle, when fond life
Strives with its dread antipathy. Her limbs
Lay pliant, with composure, on the couch,
Whose draperies loosely fell about her form,
With gentle flow, and natural fold on fold,
Proof of no difficult conflict. There had been,
Perchance, one pang of terror, when she gave
Free scams to her terrible enemy ;
Or, in the moment when the venomous gall
Went sudden to her heart ; for, from her neck,
The silken robes had parted. The white bast
Lay half revealed, save where the affluent hair
Stream'd over it in thick dishevell'd folds,
That ask'd not further cae. Oh! to behold,
With eye still piercing to the sweet recess,
Where rose each gentle slope, that seem'd to swell
Beneath mine eye, as conscious of my gaze,
And throbbing with emotion soft as strange,
Of love skin to fear! Thus swelling still,
Like little billows on some happy sea,
They sudden seem'd to freeze, as if the life
Grew cold when all was loveliest. One blue vein
Skirted the white curl of each heaving wave,
A tint from some sweet sunbow, such as life
Flings ever on the cold domain of death ;
And, at their equal heights, two ruby crests—
Two yet unopen'd buds from the same flower—
Borne upward by the billows rising yet,
Grew into petrified gems l--with each an eye
Eloquent pleading to the passionate heart,
For all of love it knows ! Alas ! the mock!
That Death should mask himself with loveliness,
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