| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | After Reading Shakspeare | | By Charles Edwin Markham (1852–1940) |
| | | BLITHE Fancy lightly builds with airy hands | |
| Or on the edges of the darkness peers, | |
| Breathless and frightened at the voice she hears: | |
| Imagination (lo! the sky expands) | |
| Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,— | 5 |
| Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres, | |
| The rush of light before the hurrying years, | |
| The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands. | |
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| Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light | |
| The dusky vales of Saturn—wood and stream; | 10 |
| But who shall follow on the awful sweep | |
| Of Neptune thro’ the dim and dreadful deep? | |
| Onward he wanders in the unknown night, | |
| And we are shadows moving in a dream. | | | | |
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