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.

---

---