Classic Poem

O transient voyager of heaven!
O silent sign of winter skies!
What adverse wind thy sail has driven
To dungeons where a prisoner lies?

Methinks the hands that shut the sun
So sternly from this mourning brow
Might still their rebel task have done
And checked a thing so frail as thou.

They would have done it had they known
The talisman that dwelt in thee,
For all the suns that ever shone
Have never been so kind to me.

For many a week, and many a day,
My heart was weighed with sinking gloom,
When morning rose in mourning grey
And faintly lit my prison room;

But, angel like, when I awoke,
Thy silvery form so soft and fair,
Shining through darkness, sweetly spoke
Of cloudy skies and mountains bare —

The dearest to a mountaineer,
Who, all life long has loved the snow
That crowned her native summits drear*
Better than greenest plains below.

And, voiceless, soulless messenger,
Thy presence waked a thrilling tone
That comforts me while thou art here
And will sustain when thou art gone.
Emily-Jane Bronti, December — , 1837
E13
[O transient voyager of heaven ]
A manuscript, the lower half of a torn leaf, containing on one side the last seven lines of No. 39, cancelled by lines drawn across them. Below the lines is No. 44, and on the reverse of the half leaf is No. 43.