Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Selected Sonnets. VII. On Robert Burns’ Humanity

Henry Ellison (1811–1880)

OH noble Burns! thy soul was like the lark

That ’neath thy feet sprang up to greet the sky,

Yet singing of the earth eternally,

And pleading up to heaven—while yet dark

It lay beneath thee, thou afar didst mark

The Day that Cometh in its majesty;

And, kindling up thereat thy poesy,

With its articulate blasts didst blow the spark!

That spark of Love divine, which in thy soul

God placed, and which, as still thou sang’st, did grow,

And kindle, till it warm’d this mighty Whole—

Until that Whole, transfigured in its glow,

Revealed to thee the one great Word, the sole

Abiding Truth—that LOVE is all below.