Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/926

 EMILY BRONTE

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,

I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

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 That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

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, Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.

O dreadful is the check intense the agony When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see, When the pulse begins to throb the brain to think again The soul to fed the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less, The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless; And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine, If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.

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��746 The Old Stoic

RICHES I hold in light esteem, And Love I laugh to scorn, And lust of fame was but a dream That vanish'd with the morn:

And, if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me

Is, 'Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty''

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