Selected Poems: The Brontë Sisters
128
Selected Poems: The Brontë Sisters
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847779854 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 10/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
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The Brontë Sisters: Selected Poems
By Stevie Davies
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2002 Stevie DaviesAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-985-4
CHAPTER 1
POEMS BY CHARLOTTE BRONTË
Lines Addressed to 'The Tower of All Nations'
Oh, thou great, thou mighty tower!
Rising up so solemnly
O'er all this splendid, glorious city:
This city of the sea;
Thou seem'st, as silently I gaze,
Like a pillar of the sky:
So lofty is thy structure grey;
So massive, and so high!
The dome of Heaven is o'er thee hung
With its maze of silver stars;
The earth is round about thee spread
With its eternal bars.
And such a charming doggerel
As this was never wrote,
Not even by the mighty
And high Sir Walter Scott!
Written upon the Occasion of the Dinner Given to the Literati of the Glasstown, which was attended by all the Great Men of the present time: Soldier, Sailor, Poet and Painter, Architect, Politician, Novelist and Romancer.
The splendid Hall is blazing with many a glowing light,
And a spirit-like effulgence mild, a flood of glory bright,
Flows round the stately pillars, nor dimly dies away
In the arched roof of solid stone, but there each golden ray
Shines with a brightened splendour, a radiance rich and fair,
And then falls amid the palace vast, and lightens up the air,
Till the atmosphere around is one continuous flow
Of streaming lustre, brilliant light, and liquid topaz glow.
All beneath this gorgeousness there sits a chosen band
Of genius high and courage bold: the noblest of the land.
The feast is spread, and brightly the purple juice doth shine
In the yellow gold magnificent: the sparkling generous wine!
And all between the thunders of patriotic cheers
Is heard the sounding orchestra, while the inspiring tears
Of a rich southern vineyard are quaffed to wish the health
Of some most noble warrior fierce, a nation's power and wealth.
And then arises slowly an orator of might
And pours a flood of eloquence upon this festal night.
The gentle stream flows dimpling 'mong rhetoric's bright flowers,
Poises in wild sublimity on eagle's wing-high towers;
And lost amid the cloudy curtains of his might,
Far beyond the common ken his spirit has taken flight.
For awhile he dwells in glory within the solemn veil,
Then returns upon the smoother seas of beauty fair to sail.
The scene this night is joyous within these palace walls,
But ere ten passing centuries are gone these lofty halls
May stand in darksome ruin: these stately pillars high
May echo back far other sounds than those which sweetly fly
Among their light bold arches, and mingling softly rise
In a wild enchanting melody, which tremulously dies;
The yell of the hyena, the bloody-tiger's howl,
May be heard in this magnificence, mixed with the lion's growl;
While in the cold pale moonlight may stand the ruins grey,
These marble columns mouldering, and gladness fled away!
Home-Sickness
Of College I am tired; I wish to be at home,
Far from the pompous tutor's voice, and the hated school-boy's groan.
I wish that I had freedom to walk about at will;
That I no more was troubled by my Greek and slate and quill.
I wish to see my kitten, to hear my ape rejoice,
To listen to my nightingale's or parrot's lovely voice.
And England does not suit me: it's cold and full of snow;
So different from black Africa's warm, sunny, genial glow.
I'm shivering in the day-time, and shivering all the night:
I'm called poor, startled, withered wretch, and miserable wight!
And oh! I miss my brother, I miss his gentle smile
Which used so many long dark hours of sorrow to beguile.
I miss my dearest mother; I now no longer find
Aught half so mild as she was, – so careful and so kind.
Oh, I have not my father's, my noble father's arms
To guard me from all wickedness, and keep me safe from harms.
I hear his voice no longer; I see no more his eye
Smile on me in my misery: to whom now shall I fly?
from Retrospection
We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair;
We sowed in youth a mustard seed,
We cut an almond rod;
We are now grown up to riper age –
Are they withered in the sod?
Are they blighted, failed and faded,
Are they mouldered back to clay?
For life is darkly shaded;
And its joys fleet fast away.
Faded! the web is still of air,
But how its folds are spread,
And from its tints of crimson clear
How deep a glow is shed.
The light of an Italian sky
Where clouds of sunset lingering lie
Is not more ruby-red.
But the spring was under a mossy stone,
Its jet may gush no more.
Hark! sceptic bid thy doubts be gone,
Is that a feeble roar
Rushing around thee? Lo! the tide
Of waves where armèd fleets may ride
Sinking and swelling, frowns and smiles
An ocean with a thousand isles
And scarce a glimpse of shore.
The mustard-seed in distant land
Bends down a mighty tree,
The dry unbudding almond-wand
Has touched eternity.
There came a second miracle
Such as on Aaron's sceptre fell,
And sapless grew like life from heath,
Bud, bloom and fruit in mingling wreath
All twined the shrivelled off-shoot round
As flowers lie on the lone grave-mound.
Dream that stole o'er us in the time
When life was in its vernal clime,
Dream that still faster o'er us steals
As the mild star of spring declining
The advent of that day reveals,
That glows on Sirius' fiery shining:
Oh! as thou swellest, and as the scenes
Cover this cold world's darkest features,
Stronger each change my spirit weans
To bow before thy god-like creatures.
The Wounded Stag
Passing amid the deepest shade
Of the wood's sombre heart,
Last night I saw a wounded deer
Laid lonely and apart.
Such light as pierced the crowded boughs
(Light scattered, scant, and dim),
Passed through the fern that formed his couch,
And centred full on him.
Pain trembled in his weary limbs,
Pain filled his patient eye;
Pain-crushed amid the shadowy fern
His branchy crown did lie.
Where were his comrades? where his mate?
All from his death-bed gone!
And he, thus struck and desolate,
Suffered and bled alone.
Did he feel what a man might feel,
Friend-left and sore distrest?
Did Pain's keen dart, and Grief's sharp sting
Strive in his mangled breast?
Did longing for affection lost
Barb every deadly dart;
Love unrepaid, and Faith betrayed, –
Did these torment his heart?
No! leave to man his proper doom!
These are the pangs that rise
Around the bed of state and gloom,
Where Adam's offspring dies!
'Turn not now for comfort here'
Turn not now for comfort here;
The lamps are quenched, the moors are gone;
Cold and lonely, dim and drear,
Void are now those hills of stone.
Sadly sighing, Anvale woods
Whisper peace to my decay;
Fir-tree over pine-tree broods
Dark and high and piled away.
Gone are all who saw my glory
Fill on festal nights the trees
Distant lit, now silver hoary,
Bowed they to the freshening breeze.
They are dead who heard at night
Woods and winds and waters sound,
Where my casements cast their light
Red upon the snow-piled ground.
Some from afar in foreign regions,
Some from drear suffering – wild unrest,
All light on land and winged legions
Fill the old woods and parent nest.
'He could not sleep! – the couch of war'
He could not sleep! – the couch of war,
Simple and rough beneath him spread,
Scared sleep away, and scattered far
The balm its influence might have shed.
He could not sleep! his temples, pressed
To the hard pillow, throbbed with pain;
The belt around his noble breast
His heart's wild pulse could scarce restrain.
And stretched in feverish unrest
Awake the great commander lay;
In vain the cooling night-wind kissed
His brow with its reviving play,
As through the open window streaming
All the fresh scents of night it shed,
And mingled with the moonlight, beaming
In broad clear lustre round his bed.
Out in the night Cirhala's water
Lifted its voice of swollen floods;
On its wild shores the bands of slaughter
Lay camped amid its savage woods.
Beneath the lonely Auberge's shelter
The Duke's rough couch that night was spread;
The sods of battle round him welter
In noble blood that morning shed;
And, gorged with prey, and now declining
From all the fire of glory won,
Watchful and fierce he lies repining
O'er what may never be undone.
The Teacher's Monologue
The room is quiet, thoughts alone
People its mute tranquillity;
The yoke put off, the long task done, –
I am, as it is bliss to be,
Still and untroubled. Now, I see,
For the first time, how soft the day
O'er waveless water, stirless tree,
Silent and sunny, wings its way.
Now, as I watch that distant hill,
So faint, so blue, so far removed,
Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill,
That home where I am known and loved:
It lies beyond; yon azure brow
Parts me from all Earth holds for me;
And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow
Thitherward tending, changelessly.
My happiest hours, ay! all the time,
I love to keep in memory,
Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime
Decayed to dark anxiety.
Sometimes, I think a narrow heart
Makes me thus mourn those far away,
And keeps my love so far apart
From friends and friendships of to-day;
Sometimes, I think 'tis but a dream
I treasure up so jealously,
All the sweet thoughts I live on seem
To vanish into vacancy:
And then, this strange, coarse world around
Seems all that's palpable and true;
And every sight and every sound
Combines my spirit to subdue
To aching grief; so void and lone
Is Life and Earth – so worse than vain,
The hopes that, in my own heart sown,
And cherished by such sun and rain
As Joy and transient Sorrow shed,
Have ripened to a harvest there:
Alas! methinks I hear it said,
'Thy golden sheaves are empty air.'
All fades away; my very home
I think will soon be desolate;
I hear, at times, a warning come
Of bitter partings at its gate;
And, if I should return and see
The hearth-fire quenched, the vacant chair;
And hear it whispered mournfully,
That farewells have been spoken there,
What shall I do, and whither turn?
Where look for peace? When cease to mourn?
* * *
'Tis not the air I wished to play,
The strain I wished to sing;
My wilful spirit slipped away
And struck another string.
I neither wanted smile nor tear,
Bright joy nor bitter woe,
But just a song that sweet and clear,
Though haply sad, might flow.
A quiet song, to solace me
When sleep refused to come;
A strain to chase despondency
When sorrowful for home.
In vain I try; I cannot sing;
All feels so cold and dead
No wild distress, no gushing spring
Of tears in anguish shed;
But all the impatient gloom of one
Who waits a distant day,
When, some great task of suffering done,
Repose shall toil repay.
For youth departs, and pleasure flies,
And life consumes away,
And youth's rejoicing ardour dies
Beneath this drear delay;
And Patience, weary with her yoke,
Is yielding to despair,
And Health's elastic spring is broke
Beneath the strain of care.
Life will be gone ere I have lived;
Where now is Life's first prime?
I've worked and studied, longed and grieved,
Through all that rosy time.
To toil, to think, to long, to grieve, –
Is such my future fate?
The morn was dreary, must the eve
Be also desolate?
Well, such a life at least makes Death
A welcome, wished-for friend;
Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith,
To suffer to the end!
Diving
Look into thought and say what dost thou see;
Dive, be not fearful how dark the waves flow;
Sing through the surge, and bring pearls up to me;
Deeper, ay, deeper; the fairest lie low.
'I have dived, I have sought them, but none have I found;
In the gloom that closed o'er me no form floated by;
As I sank through the void depths, so black and profound,
How dim died the sun and how far hung the sky!
'What had I given to hear the soft sweep
Of a breeze bearing life through that vast realm of death!
Thoughts were untroubled and dreams were asleep:
The spirit lay dreadless and hopeless beneath.'
Gods of the Old Mythology
Gods of the old mythology, arise in gloom and storm;
Adramalec, bow down thy head; Nergal, dark fiend, thy form; –
The giant sons of Anakim bowed lowest at thy shrine,
And thy temple rose in Argob, with its hallowed groves of vine;
And there was eastern incense burnt, and there were garments spread,
With the fine gold decked and broidered, and tinged with radiant red, –
With the radiant red of furnace-flames that through the shadow shone,
As the full moon, when on Sinai's top, her rising light is thrown.
Baal of Chaldaea, dread god of the sun,
Come from the towers of thy proud Babylon,
From the groves where the green palms of Media grow,
Where flowers of Assyria all fragrantly blow;
Where the waves of Euphrates glide deep as the sea
Washing the gnarled roots of Lebanon's tree.
Ashtaroth, curse of the Ammonites, rise
Decked with the beauty and light of the skies,
Let stars be thy crown and let mists round thee curl
Light as the gossamer, pure as the pearl.
Semele, soft vision, come glowing and brightly,
Come in a shell, like the Greek Aphrodite,
Come in the billowy rush of the foam,
From thy gold house in Elysium, roam
Where the bright purple blooms of glory
Picture forth thy goddess-story.
Come from thy blood-lit furnaces, most terrible and dread –
From thy most black and bloody flames, god Moloch, lift thy head,
Where the wild wail of infant lungs shrieks horribly alone,
And the fearful yelping of their tongues sounds like a demon's groan.
There, their heart-riven mothers haste with burdened arms raised up,
And offer in their agony to thee thy gory cup.
O Dagon! from thy threshold roll on thy fishy train
And fall upon thy face and hands and break thy neck again:
Enormous wretch, most beastly fiend, plague of the Philistine!
O'er the locked Ark I bid thee come with its Cherubim divine.
And Belial loathsome, where art thou? Dost hear my rampant voice?
I mean to be obeyed, man, when I make such a noise.
My harp is screeching, ringing out, with a wild fevered moan,
And my lyre, like a sparrow with a sore throat, has a most unearthly tone.
A bottle of brandy is in me, and my spirit is up on high,
And I'll make every man amongst ye pay the piper ere I die;
And as for thee, thou scoundrel, thou brimstone sulphurous Mammon,
Let's have no more of thee nor of thy villainous gammon.
I'll be with you with a salt-whip most horrible for aye,
And I'll lash you till your hair turns as black as mine is grey.
You shall dwell in the red range while I blow the coals full fast,
And I'll make you feel the fury of a rushing furnace-blast,
Leap down the sweating rocks and the murderous caves of the pit,
And stamp with your hooves and lash with your tails and fire and fury spit.
I'll be at you in a jiffy as fast as I can run,
But I'm riding now on the horns of the moon and the back of the burning sun,
The wind is rushing before me and the clouds in a handgallop go,
And they are getting it properly when they fly a stiver too slow,
For the weed-slimy lands of the earth send up such a stink to me
That I'm fain to go on in my mad career, and soon shall I be with ye.
I'm a noble fellow, flames I spew, I shall eat them up if I'm spared;
I'm going to the pit of sulphur blue, and my name is Thomas Aird.
Parting
There's no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part;
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart:
There's such a thing as dwelling
On the thought ourselves have nursed,
And with scorn and courage telling
The world to do its worst.
We'll not let its follies grieve us,
We'll just take them as they come;
And then every day will leave us
A merry laugh for home.
When we've left each friend and brother,
When we're parted, wide and far,
We will think of one another,
As even better than we are.
Every glorious sight above us,
Every pleasant sight beneath,
We'll connect with those that love us,
Whom we truly love till death!
In the evening, when we're sitting
By the fire, perchance alone,
Then shall heart with warm heart meeting,
Give responsive tone for tone.
We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought.
So there's no use in weeping,
Bear a cheerful spirit still:
Never doubt that Fate is keeping
Future good for present ill!
Preference
Not in scorn do I reprove thee,
Not in pride thy vows I waive,
But, believe, I could not love thee,
Wert thou prince and I a slave.
These, then, are thine oaths of passion?
This, thy tenderness for me?
Judged, even, by thine own confession,
Thou art steeped in perfidy.
Having vanquished, thou wouldst leave me!
Thus I read thee long ago;
Therefore, dared I not deceive thee,
Even with friendship's gentle show.
Therefore, with impassive coldness
Have I never met thy gaze;
Though, full oft, with daring boldness,
Thou thine eyes to mine didst raise.
Why that smile? Thou now art deeming
This my coldness all untrue, –
But a mask of frozen seeming,
Hiding secret fires from view.
Touch my hand, thou self-deceiver;
Nay – be calm, for I am so:
Does it burn? Does my lip quiver?
Has mine eye a troubled glow?
Canst thou call a moment's colour
To my forehead – to my cheek?
Canst thou tinge their tranquil pallor
With one flattering, feverish streak?
Am I marble? What! no woman
Could so calm before thee stand?
Nothing living, sentient, human
Could so coldly take thy hand?
Yes – a sister might, a mother:
My good-will is sisterly:
Dream not, then, I strive to smother
Fires that inly burn for thee.
Rave not, rage not, wrath is fruitless,
Fury cannot change my mind;
I but deem the feeling rootless
Which so whirls in passion's wind.
Can I love? Oh, deeply – truly –
Warmly – fondly – but not thee;
And my love is answered duly,
With an equal energy.
Wouldst thou see thy rival? Hasten,
Draw that curtain soft aside,
Look where yon thick branches chasten
Noon, with shades of eventide.
In that glade, where foliage blending
Forms a green arch overhead,
Sits thy rival, thoughtful bending
O'er a stand with papers spread –
Motionless, his fingers plying
That untired, unresting pen;
Time and tide unnoticed flying,
There he sits – the first of men!
Man of conscience – man of reason;
Stern, perchance, but ever just;
Foe to falsehood, wrong, and treason,
Honour's shield, and virtue's trust!
Worker, thinker, firm defender
Of Heaven's truth – man's liberty;
Soul of iron – proof to slander,
Rock where founders tyranny.
Fame he seeks not – but full surely
She will seek him, in his home;
This I know, and wait securely
For the atoning hour to come.
To that man my faith is given,
Therefore, soldier, cease to sue;
While God reigns in earth and Heaven,
I to him will still be true!
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Brontë Sisters: Selected Poems by Stevie Davies. Copyright © 2002 Stevie Davies. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Introduction,
The Brontës as Poets,
Charlotte Brontë,
Emily Jane Brontë,
Anne Brontë,
Poems by Charlotte Brontë,
Poems by Emily Jane Brontë,
Poems by Anne Brontë,
Notes,
Copyright,