Poem by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

The Prospect

METHINKS we do as fretful children do,	
Leaning their faces on the window-pane	
To sigh the glass dim with their own breath’s stain,	
And shut the sky and landscape from their view;	
And thus, alas! since God the Maker drew
A mystic separation ’twixt those twain,	
The life beyond us, and our souls in pain,	
We miss the prospect which we are called unto,	
By grief we are fools to use. Be still and strong,	
O man, my brother, hold thy sobbing breath,
And keep thy soul’s large window pure from wrong,	
That so, as life’s appointment issueth,	
Thy vision may be clear to watch along	
The sunset consummation-lights of death.

1. Bianca among the Nightingales
2. Substitution
3. Lord Walter's Wife
4. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 26. I lived with visions for my company
5. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 16. And yet, because thou overcomest so

Thomas Hardy The Prospect ("The twigs of the birch imprint the December sky") December 1912

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