The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/I'm standing in the forest now

4200436The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë — I'm standing in the forest nowEmily Brontë

LXII

I'm standing in the forest now,
The place, the hour the same;
And here the green leaves shed a glow,
And there, down in that lake below,
The tiny ripples flame.


The breeze sings like a summer breeze
Should sing in summer skies,
And heavenlike wide and tentlike trees
In mingled glory rise.


The murmur of their boughs and leaves
Speaks pride as well as bliss,
And that blue heaven expanding seems
The circling hills to kiss.


But where is he to-day, to-day?
No whisper, not to me;
I will not question, only say
Where may thy lover be?


Is he upon some distant shore,
Or is he on the sea?
Or is the heart thou dost adore
A faithless heart to thee?


The heart I love and you deride
Is changeless as the grave,
And neither foreign lands divide,
Nor yet the ocean's wave.

Then why should trouble cloud that brow
And tears those eyes bedim?
Reply this once—is it that thou
Hast faithless been to him?


I dreamt one dark and stormy night
When winter winds were wild . . . ·····