| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Selected Sonnets.
VII. On Robert Burns’ Humanity | | By Henry Ellison (1811–1880) |
| | (From the “Poetry of Real Life”)
OH noble Burns! thy soul was like the lark | |
| That ’neath thy feet sprang up to greet the sky, | |
| Yet singing of the earth eternally, | |
| And pleading up to heaven—while yet dark | |
| It lay beneath thee, thou afar didst mark | 5 |
| The Day that Cometh in its majesty; | |
| And, kindling up thereat thy poesy, | |
| With its articulate blasts didst blow the spark! | |
| That spark of Love divine, which in thy soul | |
| God placed, and which, as still thou sang’st, did grow, | 10 |
| And kindle, till it warm’d this mighty Whole— | |
| Until that Whole, transfigured in its glow, | |
| Revealed to thee the one great Word, the sole | |
| Abiding Truth—that LOVE is all below. | | | | |
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