| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | II. On Rembrandt, Occasioned by His Picture of Jacob’s Dream | | By Washington Allston (1779–1843) |
| | | AS in that twilight, superstitious age, | |
| When all beyond the narrow grasp of mind | |
| Seemed fraught with meanings of supernal kind, | |
| When e’en the learned philosophic sage, | |
| Wont with the stars through boundless space to range, | 5 |
| Listened with reverence to the changeling’s tale; | |
| E’en so, thou strangest of all beings strange! | |
| E’en so thy visionary scenes I hail; | |
| That, like the rambling of an idiot’s speech, | |
| No image giving of a thing on earth, | 10 |
| Nor thought significant in reason’s reach, | |
| Yet in their random shadowings give birth | |
| To thoughts and things from other worlds that come, | |
| And fill the soul, and strike the reason dumb. | | | | |
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