The Legend of St. Laura
Saint Laura, in her sleep of death,
Preserves beneath the tomb
---'Tis willed where what is willed must be---
In incorruptibility
Her beauty and her bloom.
So pure her maiden life had been,
So free from earthly stain,
'Twas fixed in fate by Heaven's own Queen,
That till the earth's last closing scene
She should unchanged remain.
Within a deep sarcophagus
Of alabaster sheen,
With sculptured lid of roses white,
She slumbered in unbroken night
By mortal eyes unseen.
Above her marble couch was reared
A monumental shrine,
Where cloistered sisters, gathering round,
Made night and morn the aisle resound
With choristry divine.
The abbess died: and in her pride
Her parting mandate said,
They should her final rest provide,
The alabaster couch beside,
Where slept the sainted dead.
The abbess came of princely race:
The nuns might not gainsay:
And sadly passed the timid band,
To execute the high command
They dared not disobey.
The monument was opened then:
It gave to general sight
The alabaster couch alone:
But all its lucid substance shone
With præ.ternatural light.
They laid the corpse within the shrine:
They closed its doors again:
But nameless terror seemed to fall,
Throughout the live-long night, on all
Who formed the funeral train.
Lo! on the morrow morn, still closed
The monument was found:
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poem by Thomas Love Peacock
Added by Poetry Lover
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