The Bronte Sisters

Selected Poems

Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Jane Bronte, Stevie Davies

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136068829
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Although the Brontës have long fascinated readers of fiction and biography, their poetry was all too little known until this pioneering selection by Stevie Davies, the novelist and critic. Charlotte (1816-1855) is certainly a competent poet, and Anne (1820-1849) developed a distinctive voice, while Emily (1818-1848) is one of the great women poets in English.

Read together with their novels, the poems movingly elucidate the ideas around which the narratives revolve. And they surprise us out of our conventional notions of the sisters' personalities: Emily's rebelliousness, for example, is counterbalanced here by great tenderness.

This selection of over seventy poems gives an idea of the variety of thought and feeling within each author's work, and of the way in which the poems of these three remarkable writers parallel and reflect each other.

POEMS BY EMILY JANE BRONTË

‘High waving heather, ’neath stormy blasts bending’

High waving heather, ’neath stormy blasts bending,

Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;

Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,

Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,

Man’s spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,

Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forests lending

One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;

Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,

Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,

Wider and deeper their waters extending,

Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,

Changing for ever from midnight to noon;

Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,

Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,

Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,

Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

‘All day I’ve toiled, but not with pain’

All day I’ve toiled, but not with pain,

In learning’s golden mine;

And now at eventide again

The moonbeams softly shine.

There is no snow upon the ground,

No frost on wind or wave;

The south wind blew with gentlest sound

And broke their icy grave.

’Tis sweet to wander here at night

To watch the winter die,

With heart as summer sunshine light

And warm as summer sky.

O may I never lose the peace

That lulls me gently now,

Though time should change my youthful face,

And years should shade my brow!

True to myself, and true to all,

May I be healthful still,

And turn away from passion’s call,

And curb my own wild will.

‘I am the only being whose doom’

I am the only being whose doom

No tongue would ask, no eye would mourn;

I never caused a thought of gloom,

A smile of joy, since I was born.

In secret pleasure, secret tears,

This changeful life has slipped away,

As friendless after eighteen years,

As lone as on my natal day.

There have been times I cannot hide,

There have been times when this was drear,

When my sad soul forgot its pride

And longed for one to love me here.

But those were in the early glow

Of feelings since subdued by care;

And they have died so long ago,

I hardly now believe they were.

First melted off the hope of youth,

Then fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew;

And then experience told me truth

In mortal bosoms never grew.

’Twas grief enough to think mankind

All hollow, servile, insincere;

But worse to trust to my own mind

And find the same corruption there.

‘Only some spires of bright green grass’

Only some spires of bright green grass

Transparently in sunshine quivering

‘Now trust a heart that trusts in you’

Now trust a heart that trusts in you,

And firmly say the word ‘Adieu’;

Be sure, wherever I may roam,

My heart is with your heart at home;

Unless there be no truth on earth,

And vows meant true are nothing worth,

And mortal man have no control

Over his own unhappy soul;

Unless I change in every thought,

And memory will restore me nought,

And all I have of virtue die

Beneath far Gondal’s foreign sky.

The mountain peasant loves the heath

Better than richest plains beneath;

He would not give one moorland wild

For all the fields that ever smiled;

And whiter brows than yours may be,

And rosier cheeks my eyes may see,

A...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Poems by Charlotte Brontë
• Poems by Emily Jane Brontë
• Poems by Anne Brontë
• Notes