The Messenger

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

And visions rise and change which kill me with desire

Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,

When joy grew mad with awe at counting future tears;

But first, a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;

The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends;

Mute music soothes my breast, unuttered 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 harbor 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 feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain!