Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | Crowns | By Edgar Fawcett (18471904) |
| IT chanced that in the dubious dusk of sleep | |
I seemed to attain that realm where mortals throw | |
All gross mortality earthward ere they go | |
Forth as frail spirits amid deaths hollow deep. | |
All folly and sin was here that life may reap, | 5 |
All desperate fear and hope, all joy or woe; | |
And here all precious crowns the exalted know, | |
Lay gathered in superb tumultuous heap! | |
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Stooping toward these, I marked with silent awe | |
Their ponderous gold, or gems that beamed like day, | 10 |
Or lovelier laurel that grand brows had worn; | |
But hid below the beauty of each, I saw | |
Continually, in grim recurrent way, | |
The poignance of one small red-rusted thorn! | | | |
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