Explore "A Messenger" by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How oft do they their silver bowers leave, / To come to succour us that succour want! / How oft do they with golden pineons cleave / The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant, / Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant! / They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward, / And their bright Squadrons round about us plant; / And all for love, and nothing for reward. / O! Why should heavenly God to men have such / regard? / -- _Spenser's "Faerie Queene. "_
That the other world of our hope rests on no distant, shining star, but lies about us as an atmosphere, unseen yet near, is the belief of many. The veil of material life shades earthly eyes, they say, from the glories in which we ever are. But sometimes when the veil wears thin in mortal stress, or is caught away by a rushing, mighty wind of inspiration, the trembling human soul, so bared, so purified, may look down unimagined heavenly vistas, and messengers may steal across the shifting boundary, breathing hope and the air of a brighter world. And of him who speaks his vision, men say "He is mad," or "He has dreamed."