The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/Lines (3)
LXXI
LINES
The soft unclouded blue of air,
The earth as golden, green, and fair,
And bright as Eden's used to be,
That air and earth have rested me,
Laid on the grass I lapsed away,
Sank back again to childhood's day;
All harsh thoughts perished, memory mild
Subdued both grief and passion wild.
But did the sunshine even now
That bathed his stern and swarthy brow,
Oh did it wake—I long to know—
One whisper, one sweet dream in him,
One lingering joy that years ago
Had faded—lost in distance dim?
That iron man was born like me,
And he was once an ardent boy;
He must have felt in infancy
The glory of a summer sky.
Though storms untold his mind has tossed,
He cannot utterly have lost
Remembrance of his early home—
So lost that not a gleam may come.
No vision of his mother's face
When she so fondly mild set free
Her darling child from her embrace
To roam till eve at liberty.
Nor of his haunts, nor of the flowers,
His tiny hand would grateful bear,
Returning from the darkening bowers,
To weave into her glossy hair.
I saw the light breeze kiss his cheek,
His fingers 'mid the roses twined;
I watched to mark one transient streak
Of pensive softness shade his mind.
The open window showed around
A glowing park and glorious sky,
And thick woods swelling with the sound
Of nature's mingled harmony.
Silent he sat. That stormy breast
At length I said has deigned to rest;
At length above that spirit flows
The waveless ocean of repose.
Let me draw near, 'twill soothe to view
His dark eyes dimmed with holy dew;
Remorse even now may wake within
And half unchain his soul from sin.
Perhaps this is the destined hour
When Hell shall lose its fatal power,
And Heaven itself shall bend above
To hail the soul redeemed by love.
Unmarked I gazed, my idle thought
Passed with the ray whose shine it caught ;
One glance revealed how little care
He felt for all the beauty there.
Oh ! crime can make the heart grow old
Sooner than years of wearing woe,
Can turn the warmest bosom cold
As winter wind or polar snow.
April 28, 1839.
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press