The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/The night was dark, yet winter breathed
XXXI
The night was dark, yet winter breathed
With softened sighs on Gondal's shore;
And though its wind repining grieved,
It chained the snow-swollen streams no more.
How deep into the wilderness
My horse had strayed, I cannot say;
But neither morsel nor caress
Would urge him farther on the way.
So loosening from his neck the rein,
I set my worn companion free,
And billowy hill and boundless plain
Full soon divided him from me.
The sullen clouds lay all unbroken
And blackening round the horizon drear,
But still they gave no certain token
Of heavy rain or tempest near.
I paused, confounded and distracted,
Down in the heath my limbs I threw;
But wilder as I longed for rest,
More wakeful heart and eyelids grew.
It was about the middle night
And under such a starless dome,
When gliding from the mountains height,
I saw a shadowy spirit come.
Her wavy hair on her shoulders bare,
It shone like soft clouds round the moon;
Her noiseless feet, like melting sleet,
Gleamed white a moment, then were gone.
'What seek you now on this bleak moor brow,
Where wanders that form from heaven descending?'
It was thus I said as her graceful head
The spirit above my couch was bending.
'This is my home where whirlwinds blow,
Where snowdrifts round my path are swelling;
'Tis many a year, 'tis long ago,
Since I beheld another dwelling.
'When thick and fast the smothering blast
I've welcomed the winter on the plain,
If my cheek grew pale in its loudest gale,
May I never tread the hills again.
'The shepherd had died on the mountain-side,
But my ready aid was near him then;
I led him back o'er the hidden track
And gave him to his native glen.
'When tempests roar on the lonely shore
I light my beacon with seaweeds dry,
And it flings its fire through the darkness dire
And gladdens the sailor's hopeless eye.
'And the sea-birds noisy I love to keep,
Their timid forms to guard from harm;
I have a spell, and they know it well,
And I save them with a powerful charm.
'Thy own good steed on his friendless bed
A few hours since you left to die;
But I knelt by his side and the saddle untied,
And life returned to his glazing eye.
'To a silent home thy feet may come,
And years may follow of toilsome pain;
But yet I swear by that burning tear,
The loved shall meet on its hearth again.'
January 12, 1839.