| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Sonnets.
St. John at Patmos.
I. “What be his dreams” | | By William Alexander (1824–1911) |
| | | WHAT be his dreams in Patmos? O’er the seas | |
| Looks he toward Athens, where the very fall | |
| Of Grecian sunlight is Platonical? | |
| Or, peradventure, towards the Cyclades, | |
| The Delian earth-star, ray’d with laurel trees— | 5 |
| From ribbon’d baskets where Demeter threw | |
| Flowers the colour of the country blue | |
| Oat-garlanded in Pares—or where bees | |
| Humming o’er Amalthæa, who fed Zeus | |
| With goat-milk, goldenly the forest starr’d, | 10 |
| While rosy purple apples full of juice | |
| Laugh’d in the grassy horn—where, Naxosward, | |
| Flush’d Dyonysus, driven o’er the brine, | |
| Ivied the mast, and cream’d the crimson wine. | | | | |
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