Sleeping Beauty Poetry

The Sleeping Beauty
by John Banister Tabb
(1845–1909)

THE sculptor in the marble found
Her hidden from the world around,
As in a donjon keep:
With gentle hand he took away
The coverlet that o’er her lay,
But left her fast asleep.

And still she slumbers: e’en as he
Who saw in far futurity
What now before us lies—
The fairest vision that the stream
Of night, subsiding, leaves agleam
Beneath the noonday skies.

from Lyrics by John B. Tabb (1909).