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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=386523" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Prisoner. A Fragment</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the dungeon crypts idly did I stray,<br>Reckless of the lives wasting there away;<br>'Draw the ponderous bars; open, Warder stern!'<br>He dare not say me nay–the hinges harshly turn.<br>'Our guests are darkly lodged,' I whispered, gazing through <br>The vault whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than blue.<br>(This was when glad spring laughed in awaking pride.)<br>'Aye, darkly lodged enough!' returned my sullen guide.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, God forgive my youth, forgive my careless tongue!<br>I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung; <br>'Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear, <br>That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild <br>As sculptured marble saint or slumbering, unweaned child;<br>It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair, <br>Pain could not trace a line nor grief a shadow there!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow:<br>'I have been struck,' she said, 'and I am suffering now;<br>Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong; <br>And were they forged in steel they could not hold me long.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: 'Shall I be won to hear;<br>Dost think, fond dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer? <br>Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans? <br>Ah, sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,<br>But hard as hardest flint the soul that lurks behind;<br>And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see <br>Than is the hidden ghost which has its home in me!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn: <br>'My friend,' she gently said, 'you have not heard me mourn; <br>When you my parents' lives-my lost life, can restore,<br>Then may I weep and sue-but never, Friend, before!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Yet, tell them, Julian, all, I am not doomed to wear <br>Year after year in gloom and desolate despair; <br>A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, <br>And offers, for short life, eternal liberty.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,<br>With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;<br>Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire, And visions rise and change which kill me with desire–</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Desire for nothing known in my maturer years <br>When joy grew mad with awe at counting future tears; <br>When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm, <br>I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunderstorm;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; <br>The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends; <br>Mute music soothes my breast-unuttered harmony <br>That I could never dream till earth was lost to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Then dawns the Invisible, the Unseen its truth reveals; <br>My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels <br>Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found; <br>Measuring the gulf it stoops and dares the final bound!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oh, dreadful is the check-intense the agony <br>When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see; <br>When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again, <br>The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less; go <br>The more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless; <br>And robed in fires of Hell, or bright with heavenly shine, <br>If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering turned to go–<br>We had no further power to work the captive woe;<br>Her cheek, he gleaming eye, declared that man had given<br>A sentence unapproved, and overruled by Heaven.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>(October 9, 1845)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">This poem is part of a larger Gondal poem which Emily revised for publication in 1846. She cut lines 1-12, 45-64, and 93-152. She added the concluding stanza, which starts with 'She ceased to speak...' The original title of the poem is 'Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle,' the names of two lovers in the Gondal saga.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Emily+Jane+Bront%C3%AB">Emily Jane Brontë</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=386523" data-title="The Prisoner. A Fragment de Emily Jane Brontë" data-description="In the dungeon crypts idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
'Draw the ponderous bars; open, Warder stern!'
He dare not say me nay–the hinges harshly turn.
'Our guests are darkly lodged,' I whispered, gazing through 
The vau..."></div>
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