| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | II. On Seeing a Child Blush on His First View of a Corpse | | By Charles Tennyson (1808–1879) |
| | | ’T IS good our earliest sympathies to trace, | |
| And I would muse upon a little thing,— | |
| What brought the blush into that infant’s face, | |
| When first confronted with the rueful King? | |
| He boldly came: what made his courage less? | 5 |
| A signal for the heart to beat less free | |
| Are all imperial presences; and he | |
| Was awed by Death’s consummate kingliness, | |
| And by the high and peerless front he bore. | |
| No thought of dying armies crossed the lad; | 10 |
| He feared the stranger, though he knew no more; | |
| Surmising and surprised, but most, afraid; | |
| As Crusoe, wandering on the desert shore, | |
| Saw but an alien footmark, and was sad! | | | | |
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