Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

By Sonnets. IV. Memory of a Dear Friend

James Drummond Burns (1823–1864)

MY grief pursues me through the Land of Sleep,

It winds into the secret of my dreams,

And shapes their shadowy pomp. When fancy seems

To charm my fevered spirit into deep

Forgetfulness, the restless thought will creep

From its dim ambush, startling that repose,

And glooms and spectral terrors round me close,

Like iron walls I may not overleap.

And then I seem to see thy face again,

But not, belovèd! as thou wert and art,

And, with thy sweet voice tingling in my brain,

From this great agony of fear I start,

To feel the slow throb of habitual pain,

And undulled anguish grasping at my heart.