by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)
The Messenger
Language: English
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!
Text Authorship:
- by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by John Mitchell (b. 1941), "The Messenger", op. 17 no. 10 (1976), from Visions from the Earth, no. 10. [text verified 1 time]
Researcher for this page: Victoria Brago
This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 18
Word count: 176