Poem of the Day

My sincerest apologies for not starting up the PotD sooner. I had a wonderful trip to England, but it took me some time to get over the jet lag and I’ve been trying to get caught up at home. No more excuses, though! Anyway, my pilgrimage to Yorkshire has rekindled my Brontë-mania. Here’s a poem by Emily, the one of the three sisters most surrounded in mystery, but the one with the most poetic talent, in my opinion. I doubt anyone will ever truly understand her motivations and inspirations since many of her personal writings have not survived, but that can’t stop us from benefiting from her poems!

No coward soul is mine
By Emily Brontë

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the worlds storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heavens glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast.
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life—that in me has rest,
As I—Undying Life—have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast Rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

I haven’t posted any poems by my dear Brontës in quite a while. I was reminded by an excerpt from this one in Alias Grace.

The Prisoner
By Emily Brontë

A FRAGMENT

In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
“Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!”
He dared not say me nay—the hinges harshly turn.

“Our guests are darkly lodged,” I whisper’d, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more gray than blue;
(This was when glad Spring laughed in awaking pride;)
“Ay, darkly lodged enough!” returned my sullen guide.

Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue;
I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung:
“Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?”

The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild
As sculptured marble saint, or slumbering unwean’d child;
It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,
Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there!

The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
“I have been struck,” she said, “and I am suffering now;
Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong;
And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long.”

Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: “Shall I be won to hear;
Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?
Or, better still, wilt melt my master’s heart with groans?
Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.

“My master’s voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
But hard as hardest flint the soul that lurks behind;
And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me.”

About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn,
“My friend,” she gently said, “you have not heard me mourn;
When you my kindred’s lives, MY lost life, can restore,
Then may I weep and sue,—but never, friend, before!

“Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

“He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

“Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.
When, if my spirit’s sky was full of flashes warm,
I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

“But, first, a hush of peace—a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;
Mute music soothes my breast—unuttered harmony,
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

“Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:
Its wings are almost free—its home, its harbour found,
Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound,

“Oh I dreadful is the check—intense the agony—
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

“Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
If it but herald death, the vision is divine!”

She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering, turned to go—
We had no further power to work the captive woe:
Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had given
A sentence, unapproved, and overruled by Heaven.

The PotD will be on hiatus this week since I will be out of town and not online much (if at all). I’m reading Wuthering Heights for Bibliophyles. I’ve read this book twice (within a month), but that was about six years ago and I’ve been wanting to read it again, so I’m glad I have an excuse now. (I’ve pretty much devoured 2/3 of the book in the last 36 hours.) Anyway, a reader posted some of Emily’s poetry in Bibliophyles and there were one or two I hadn’t posted before, so I thought I’d share.

Sympathy
By Emily Brontë

There should be no despair for you
While nightly stars are burning;
While evening pours its silent dew,
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair—though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart for ever?

They weep, you weep, it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And winter sheds its grief in snow
Where Autumn’s leaves are lying:
Yet, these revive, and from their fate
Your fate cannot be parted:
Then, journey on, if not elate,
Still, NEVER broken-hearted!

Ah, Emily… so sad…

Stanzas
By Emily Brontë

I’ll not weep that thou art going to leave me,
   There’s nothing lovely here;
And doubly will the dark world grieve me,
   While thy heart suffers there.

I’ll not weep, because the summer’s glory
   Must always end in gloom;
And, follow out the happiest story—
   It closes with a tomb!

And I am weary of the anguish
   Increasing winters bear;
Weary to watch the spirit languish
   Through years of dead despair.

So, if a tear, when thou art dying,
   Should haply fall from me,
It is but that my soul is sighing,
   To go and rest with thee.

My stockpile of poems is getting frighteningly low. I need to replenish! There will be lots more Brontë poems when I do, too.

Remembrance
By Emily Brontë

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
   Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
   Sever’d at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
   Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
   Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers
   From those brown hills have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
   After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
   While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
   Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lighten’d up my heaven,
   No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
   All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But when the days of golden dreams had perish’d,
   And even Despair was powerless to destroy;
Then did I learn how existence could be cherish’d,
   Strengthen’d and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
   Wean’d my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
   Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
   Dare not indulge in memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
   How could I seek the empty world again?

I guess I was too ill to post this morning. I’m even more ill now, but this is a distraction from the misery…

Faith and Despondency
By Emily Brontë

“The winter wind is loud and wild,
Come close to me, my darling child;
Forsake thy books, and mateless play;
And, while the night is gathering grey,
We’ll talk its pensive hours away;—

   ”Iernë, round our sheltered hall
November’s gusts unheeded call;
Not one faint breath can enter here
Enough to wave my daughter’s hair,
And I am glad to watch the blaze
Glance from her eyes, with mimic rays;
To feel her cheek so softly pressed,
In happy quiet on my breast.

   ”But, yet, even this tranquillity
Brings bitter, restless thoughts to me;
And, in the red fire’s cheerful glow,
I think of deep glens, blocked with snow;
I dream of moor, and misty hill,
Where evening closes dark and chill;
For, lone, among the mountains cold,
Lie those that I have loved of old.
And my heart aches, in hopeless pain
Exhausted with repinings vain,
That I shall greet them ne’er again!”

   ”Father, in early infancy,
When you were far beyond the sea,
Such thoughts were tyrant over me!
I often sat, for hours together,
Through the long nights of angry weather,
Raised on my pillow, to descry
The dim moon struggling in the sky;
Or, with strained ear, to catch the shock,
Of rock with wave, and wave with rock;
So would I fearful vigil keep,
And, all for listening, never sleep.
But this world’s life has much to dread,
Not so, my Father, with the dead.

   ”Oh! not for them, should we despair,
The grave is drear, but they are not there;
Their dust is mingled with the sod,
Their happy souls are gone to God!
You told me this, and yet you sigh,
And murmur that your friends must die.
Ah! my dear father, tell me why?
For, if your former words were true,
How useless would such sorrow be;
As wise, to mourn the seed which grew
Unnoticed on its parent tree,
Because it fell in fertile earth,
And sprang up to a glorious birth—
Struck deep its root, and lifted high
Its green boughs, in the breezy sky.

   ”But, I’ll not fear, I will not weep
For those whose bodies rest in sleep,—
I know there is a blessed shore,
   Opening its ports for me, and mine;
And, gazing Time’s wide waters o’er,
   I weary for that land divine,
Where we were born, where you and I
Shall meet our Dearest, when we die;
From suffering and corruption free,
Restored into the Deity.”

   ”Well hast thou spoken, sweet, trustful child!
   And wiser than thy sire;
And worldly tempests, raging wild,
   Shall strengthen thy desire—
Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam,
   Through wind and ocean’s roar,
To reach, at last, the eternal home,
   The steadfast, changeless, shore!”

Emily Brontë’s poetry is just incredible!

A Death-Scene
By Emily Brontë

“O day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;

He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!

Edward, awake, awake—
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden’s lake—
Arouse thee from thy dreams!

Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend, I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:

I hear its billows roar—
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.

Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.

It is not death, but pain
That struggles in thy breast—
Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again;
I cannot let thee rest!”

One long look, that sore reproved me
For the woe I could not bear—
One mute look of suffering moved me
To repent my useless prayer:

And, with sudden check, the heaving
Of distraction passed away;
Not a sign of further grieving
Stirred my soul that awful day.

Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting;
Sunk to peace the twilight breeze:
Summer dews fell softly, wetting
Glen, and glade, and silent trees.

Then his eyes began to weary,
Weighed beneath a mortal sleep;
And their orbs grew strangely dreary,
Clouded, even as they would weep.

But they wept not, but they changed not,
Never moved, and never closed;
Troubled still, and still they ranged not—
Wandered not, nor yet reposed!

So I knew that he was dying—
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.

Emily Brontë wrote fantastic poems. I chose this one today because I’d really like to escape to a world “where guile, and hate, and doubt, and cold suspicion never rise.”

To Imagination
By Emily Brontë

When weary with the long day’s care,
   And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
   Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend! I am not lone,
While then canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without;
   The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
   And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it, that all around
   Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom’s bound
   We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason, indeed, may oft complain
   For Nature’s sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
   Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

But thou art ever there, to bring
   The hovering vision back, and breathe
New glories o’er the blighted spring,
   And call a lovelier Life from Death.
And whisper, with a voice divine,
Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
   Yet, still, in evening’s quiet hour,
With never-failing thankfulness,
   I welcome thee, Benignant Power;
Sure solacer of human cares,
And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!

Emily Brontë wrote some amazing poetry, and this is just one example. I love this poem because it flies in the face of the belief that hope can get one through all trials and tribulations. I certainly don’t discount that hope can be wonderful, but I hardly think that’s a foregone conclusion. This poem reminds me of a line from The Shawshank Redemption (a fantastic film!): “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”

Hope
By Emily Brontë

Hope was but a timid friend;
   She sat without the grated den,
Watching how my fate would tend,
   Even as selfish-hearted men.

She was cruel in her fear;
   Through the bars one dreary day,
I looked out to see her there,
   And she turned her face away!

Like a false guard, false watch keeping,
   Still, in strife, she whispered peace;
She would sing while I was weeping;
   If I listened, she would cease.

False she was, and unrelenting;
   When my last joys strewed the ground,
Even Sorrow saw, repenting,
   Those sad relics scattered round;

Hope, whose whisper would have given
   Balm to all my frenzied pain,
Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven,
   Went, and ne’er returned again!