St Gabriel Windows

St Gabriel Windows
Photocopy c. 2013 Jamie Laubacher

Friday, April 25, 2008

Poetry Friday Return

The Prisoner
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning



I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer -
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.



Let us remember, one of the
Corporal Works of Mercy is to "comfort the imprisoned."

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