I count the dismal time by months and years <br />Since last I felt the green sward under foot, <br />And the great breath of all things summer- <br />Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears <br />As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres <br />Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute <br />Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut, <br />A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears, <br />Dilated by the distance, till the brain <br />Grows dim with fancies which it feels too <br />While ever, with a visionary pain, <br />Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine <br />Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train <br />Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.<br /><br />Elizabeth Barrett Browning<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-prisoner-6/
