| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | III. The Awaking of the Poetic Faculty | | By George Henry Boker (1823–1890) |
| | | ALL day I heard a humming in my ears, | |
| A buzz of many voices, and a throng | |
| Of swarming numbers, passing with a song | |
| Measured and stately as the rolling spheres’. | |
| I saw the sudden light of lifted spears, | 5 |
| Slanted at once against some monster wrong; | |
| And then a fluttering scarf which might belong | |
| To some sweet maiden in her morn of years. | |
| I felt the chilling damp of sunless glades, | |
| Horrid with gloom; anon, the breath of May | 10 |
| Was blown around me, and the lulling play | |
| Of dripping fountains. Yet the lights and shades, | |
| The waving scarfs, the battle’s grand parades | |
| Seemed but vague shadows of that wondrous lay. | | | | |
|
|
