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Emily Bronte
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow ;
But a tyrant spell has bound me,
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow ;
The storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below ;
But nothing drear can move me :
I will not, cannot go.
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
Thou art to all lost love the best,
The only true plant found,
Wherewith young men and maids distrest
And left of love, are crown'd.
When once the lover's rose is dead
Or laid aside forlorn,
Then willow-garlands, 'bout the head,
Bedew'd with tears, are worn.
When with neglect, the lover's bane,
Poor maids rewarded be,
For their love lost their only gain
Is but a wreath from thee.
And underneath thy cooling shade,
When weary of the light,
The love-spent youth, and love-sick maid,
Come to weep out the night.
Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior's destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times, and deeds, and darings that have been--
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect;
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart,
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings,
In which life's sordid being hath no part.
The wind of that eternal ditty sings,
Humming of future things, that burn the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind.
There was a cherry-tree. Its bloomy snows
Cool even now the fevered sight that knows
No more its airy visions of pure joy --
As when you were a boy.
There was a cherry-tree. The Bluejay sat
His blue against its white -- O blue as jet
He seemed there then!-- But now -- Whoever knew
He was so pale a blue!
There was a cherry-tree -- our child-eyes saw
The miracle:-- Its pure white snows did thaw
Into a crimson fruitage, far too sweet
But for a boy to eat.
There was a cherry-tree, give thanks and joy!--
There was a bloom of snow -- There was a boy --
There was a bluejay of the realest blue --
And fruit for both of you.
Four Trees -- upon a solitary Acre --
Without Design
Or Order, or Apparent Action --
Maintain --
The Sun -- upon a Morning meets them --
The Wind --
No nearer Neighbor -- have they --
But God --
The Acre gives them -- Place --
They -- Him -- Attention of Passer by --
Of Shadow, or of Squirrel, haply --
Or Boy --
What Deed is Theirs unto the General Nature --
What Plan
They severally -- retard -- or further --
Unknown --
Our journey had advanced --
Our feet were almost come
To that odd Fork in Being's Road --
Eternity -- by Term --
Our pace took sudden awe --
Our feet -- reluctant -- led --
Before -- were Cities -- but Between --
The Forest of the Dead --
Retreat -- was out of Hope --
Behind -- a Sealed Route --
Eternity's White Flag -- Before --
And God -- at every Gate --
I am translating a library into hands
is time a prison or a garden
are trees letters to the night
who will see the forest
’round that melancholy tree the brain
that goes to the light
with a thorn
The way the snow returns to the sky
is far more painstaking than the way it falls.
Near the end, it turns from ground to figure,
from canvas to paint. It scales the ladder
of its own self-effacement.
So the snow withdrew into a clef-shaped cleft
& waited for its cue. This winter could go
either way.
The witch hazel measured itself against an oak.
I want to be a tree, it sang, when I grow up –
A bird perch,
An insect metropolis,
A gallery of lichens above,
And below, a husband to fungi.
True, I am all these things already,
But not as a tree.
I could not find my heart
to offer to her
she being an oven
I have seen great trees
like an answer to the day
The fabled decision tree
dangles head-down,
rootless on the blackboard
in my dream. Each new
pair of twigs reaches
like a tuning fork
into silence.