Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Sonnets. V. Imagination

James Drummond Burns (1823–1864)

NOT seldom will the sun, when westering slow,

Turn his bright eye upon a fronting train

Of clouds, and from the mists and falling rain

Weave suddenly his broad and gorgeous bow.

The stainless air puts on a purple glow,

The beauteous secresies of light are plain,

And from these stripes the swimming vapours gain

More splendour than the orient skies can show.

Such is Imagination, and the power

Which peoples nature with its glorious dreams,

Which sprinkles everywhere its golden shower,

And to the fine-eyed poet, in what seems

His vacant but his visionary hour,

Tints every cloud with mild auroral gleams.