The Prisoner

 STILL let my tyrants know, I am not doom’d to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

He comes with Western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,

Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears:
When, if my spirit’s sky was full of flashes warm,

But first, a hush of peace–a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends.
Mute music soothes my breast–unutter’d harmony

Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;
Its wings are almost free–its home, its harbour found,

O dreadful is the check–intense the agony–
When the pulse begins to throb–the brain to think again–

The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.

Emily Bronte


(Emily Bronte Poems)

(The Great Poets)   ( Female Poets)    (British Poets)