The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/Aspin Castle
XLIX
ASPIN CASTLE
How do I love on summer night
To sit within this Norman door,
Whose sombre portal hides the light,
Thickening above me evermore.
How do I love to hear the flow
Of Aspin's water murmuring low,
And hours long listen to the breeze
That sighs in Beckden's waving trees.
To-night there is no wind to wake
One ripple in the lovely lake;
To-night the clouds, subdued and grey,
Starlight and moonlight shut away.
'Tis calm and still and almost drear,
So utter is the solitude;
But still I love to linger here,
And form my mood to Nature's mood.
There's a wild walk beneath the rocks
Following the bend of Aspin's side,
Tis worn by feet of mountain-flocks
That wander down to drink the tide.
Never by cliff and gnarlèd tree
Wound fairy path so sweet to me;
Yet of the native shepherds none,
In open day and cheerful sun,
Will tread its labyrinths alone.
Far less when evening's pensive hour
Hushes the bird and shuts the flower,
And gives to fancy magic power
O'er each familiar tower.
For round their hearths they'll tell this tale,
And every listener swears it true;
How wanders there a phantom pale
With spirit-eyes of dreamy blue.
It always walks with head declined,
The long curls wave not in the wind;
Its face is fair—divinely fair;
But always on that angel brow
Rests such a shade of deep despair,
As nought divine could ever know.
How oft in twilight lingering lone,
I've stood to watch that phantom rise,
And seen in mist and moonlit stone,
Its gleaming hair and solemn eyes.
The ancient men in secret say
'Tis the first chief of Aspin grey
That haunts his feudal home;
But why around that alien grave,
Three thousand miles beyond the wave,
Where his exiled ashes lie,
Under the cope of England's sky,
Doth he not rather roam?
I've seen his picture in the hall,
It hangs upon an eastern wall;
And often when the sun declines
That picture like an angel shines.
And when the moonbeam still and blue
Streams the spectral windows through
That picture's like a spectral too.
The hall is full of portraits rare,
Beauty and mystery mingle there;
At his right hand an infant fair
Looks from its golden frame;
And just like his its ringlets bright,
Its large dark eyes of shadowy light,
Its cheek's pure hue, its forehead white,
And like its noble name.
Daughter divine! and could his gaze
Fall coldly on thy peerless face?
And did he never smile to see
Himself restored to infancy?
Never put back that golden flow
Of curls; and kiss that pearly brow,
And feel no other earthly bliss
Was equal to that parent's kiss?
No; turn towards the western side.
There stands Sidonia's deity!
In all her glory, all her pride!
And truly like a god she seems,
Some lad of wild enthusiast's dream.
And this is she for whom he died!
For whom his spirit unforgiven
Wanders unsheltered, shut from heaven,
An outcast for eternity.
Those eyes are dust, those lips are clay,
That form is mouldered all away;
Nor thought, nor sense, nor pulse, nor breath;
The whole devoured and lost in death!
There is no worm however mean,
That living, is not nobler now
Than she—Lord Alfred's idol queen,
So loved—so worshipped long ago.
O come away! The Norman door
Is silenced with a sudden shine;
Come, leave these dreams o'er things of yore,
And turn to Nature's face divine.
O'er wood and wold—o'er flood and fell,
O'er flashing lake and gleaming dell,
The harvest-moon looks down;
When Heaven smiles with love and light,
And earth looks back so dazzling bright
On such a scene, on such a night
Earth's children should not frown.
February 6, 1843.