| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | Crowns | | By Edgar Fawcett (1847–1904) |
| | | 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 death’s 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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