HERE in the dark what ghostly figures press! -- No phantom of the Past, or grim or sad; No wailing spirit of woe; no spectre, clad In white and wandering cloud, whose dumb distress Is that its crime it never may confess; No shape from the strewn sea; nor they that add The link of Life and Death, -- the tearless mad, That live nor die in dreary nothingness: But blessed spirits waiting to be born -- Thoughts to unlock the fettering chains of Things; The Better Time; the Universal Good. Their smile is like the joyous break of morn; How fair, how near, how wistfully they brood! Listen! that murmur is of angels' wings. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE REVENGE OF HAMISH by SIDNEY LANIER UNCLE AN' AUNT by WILLIAM BARNES HARMONIE DU SOIR by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE THE PASSING BELL by GORDON BOTTOMLEY AN EPITAPH ON MRS. EL: Y by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) ASOLANDO: SPECULATIVE by ROBERT BROWNING FROM THE GRASS by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON THE DEVIL'S DRIVE by GEORGE GORDON BYRON OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 18. ELEGIAC VERSE: THE FIRST EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION |