The Angel and the Girl
The angel and the girl are
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.
See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other's
Till heaven in hers and earth in
Shine steady there.
He's come to
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time.
Of strangest strangeness is the
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture
So great a wonder that it
Each feather tremble on his
Outside the window footsteps
Into the ordinary
And with the sun along the
Pursue their unreturning
Sound's perpetual
Rolls its numbered octaves
And hoarsely grinds its battered
But through the endless
These neither speak nor movement make.
But stare into their deepening
As if their grace would never break.
Edwin Muir
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