Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell . Brontë Charlotte

crashing,

           It poured not out like open sluice;

           No, sparkling still, and redly flashing,

           Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice.

           "I saw it sink, and strove to taste it,

           My eager lips approached the brim;

           The movement only seemed to waste it;

           It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim.

           "These I have drunk, and they for ever

           Have poisoned life and love for me;

           A draught from Sodom's lake could never

           More fiery, salt, and bitter, be.

           "Oh! Love was all a thin illusion

           Joy, but the desert's flying stream;

           And glancing back on long delusion,

           My memory grasps a hollow dream.

           "Yet whence that wondrous change of feeling,

           I never knew, and cannot learn;

           Nor why my lover's eye, congealing,

           Grew cold and clouded, proud and stern.

           "Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting,

           He careless left, and cool withdrew;

           Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting,

           Nor ev'n one glance of comfort threw.

           "And neither word nor token sending,

           Of kindness, since the parting day,

           His course, for distant regions bending,

           Went, self-contained and calm, away.

           "Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation,

           Which will not weaken, cannot die,

           Hasten thy work of desolation,

           And let my tortured spirit fly!

           "Vain as the passing gale, my crying;

           Though lightning-struck, I must live on;

           I know, at heart, there is no dying

           Of love, and ruined hope, alone.

           "Still strong and young, and warm with vigour,

           Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow;

           And many a storm of wildest rigour

           Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough.

           "Rebellious now to blank inertion,

           My unused strength demands a task;

           Travel, and toil, and full exertion,

           Are the last, only boon I ask.

           "Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming

           Of death, and dubious life to come?

           I see a nearer beacon gleaming

           Over dejection's sea of gloom.

           "The very wildness of my sorrow

           Tells me I yet have innate force;

           My track of life has been too narrow,

           Effort shall trace a broader course.

           "The world is not in yonder tower,

           Earth is not prisoned in that room,

           'Mid whose dark panels, hour by hour,

           I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom.

           "One feeling – turned to utter anguish,

           Is not my being's only aim;

           When, lorn and loveless, life will languish,

           But courage can revive the flame.

           "He, when he left me, went a roving

           To sunny climes, beyond the sea;

           And I, the weight of woe removing,

           Am free and fetterless as he.

           "New scenes, new language, skies less clouded,

           May once more wake the wish to live;

           Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded,

           New pictures to the mind may give.

           "New forms and faces, passing ever,

           May hide the one I still retain,

           Defined, and fixed, and fading never,

           Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain.

           "And we might meet – time may have changed him;

           Chance may reveal the mystery,

           The secret influence which estranged him;

           Love may restore him yet to me.

           "False thought – false hope – in scorn be banished!

           I am not loved – nor loved have been;

           Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished;

           Traitors! mislead me not again!

           "To words like yours I bid defiance,

           'Tis such my mental wreck have made;

           Of God alone, and self-reliance,

           I ask for solace – hope for aid.

           "Morn comes – and ere meridian glory

           O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile,

           Both lonely wood and mansion hoary

           I'll leave behind, full many a mile."

      GILBERT

I. THE GARDEN

           Above the city hung the moon,

           Right o'er a plot of ground

           Where flowers and orchard-trees were fenced

           With lofty walls around:

           'Twas Gilbert's garden – there to-night

           Awhile he walked alone;

           And, tired with sedentary toil,

           Mused where the moonlight shone.

           This garden, in a city-heart,

           Lay still as houseless wild,

           Though many-windowed mansion fronts

           Were round it; closely piled;

           But thick their walls, and those within

           Lived lives by noise unstirred;

           Like wafting of an angel's wing,

           Time's flight by them