| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | III. A Vision of Old Babylon | | By Edmund Ollier (1827–1886) |
| | | OUTLEAPING from the Present’s narrow cage, | |
| I floated on the backward waves of Time, | |
| Until I landed in that antique age | |
| When the now hoary world was in its prime. | |
| How young, and fresh, and green, all things did look! | 5 |
| I stood upon a broad and grassy plain, | |
| Shrouded with leaves, between which, like a brook | |
| Dashed on the turf in showers of golden rain, | |
| The broken sunlight mottled all the land; | |
| And soon, between the trees, I was aware | 10 |
| Of a vast city, girt with stony band, | |
| That hung upon the burning blue-bright air, | |
| Like snowy clouds which that strange architect, | |
| The Wind, has with his wayward fancies decked. | | | | |
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