I’ve found a love for the Bronte sisters
I’ve found a love in myself for the Bronte sisters.
I’m a bit interested in what was going on between Charlotte and Anne, that’s for sure.
Seriously, read their Wikipedia entries. They’re a novel of their own.
Like their birth order, start with Charlotte first. She seems to have been a genuine character, and not wholly in a good way.
*
“A Death Scene” by Emily Bronte:
1. ‘O Day! he cannot die
When thou so fair art shining!
O Sun, in such a glorious sky,
So tranquilly declining;
2. ‘He cannot leave thee now,
While fresh west winds are blowing,
And all around his youthful brow
Thy cheerful light is glowing!
3. ‘Edward, awake, awake-
The golden evening gleams
Warm and bright on Arden’s lake-
Arouse thee from thy dreams!
4. ‘Beside thee, on my knee,
My dearest friend! I pray
That thou, to cross the eternal sea,
Wouldst yet one hour delay:
5. ‘I hear its billows roar-
I see them foaming high;
But no glimpse of a further shore
Has blest my straining eye.
6. ‘Believe not what they urge
Of Eden isles beyond;
Turn back, from that tempestuous surge,
To thy own native land.
7. ‘It is not death, but pain
That struggles in thy breast-
Nay, rally, Edward, rouse again;
I cannot let thee rest!’
8. One long look, that sore reproved me
For the woe I could not bear-
One mute look of suffering moved me
To repent my useless prayer:
9. And, with sudden check, the heaving
Of distraction passed away;
Not a sign of further grieving
Stirred my soul that awful day.
10. Paled, at length, the sweet sun setting;
Sunk to peace the twilight breeze:
Summer dews fell softly, wetting
Glen, and glade, and silent trees.
11. Then his eyes began to weary,
Weighed beneath a mortal sleep;
And their orbs grew strangely dreary,
Clouded, even as they would weep.
12. But they wept not, but they changed not,
Never moved, and never closed;
Troubled still, and still they ranged not-
Wandered not, nor yet reposed!
13. So I knew that he was dying-
Stooped, and raised his languid head;
Felt no breath, and heard no sighing,
So I knew that he was dead.
*
I’m suddenly struck by the beauty of these women. Caught up in the moments of their words, and the way they might have been.
I don’t want to read their biographies. I don’t want to wrap myself tight in the stifling truth.
I want to take the short Wikipedia accounts, and churn them into butter in my head. And I will swipe their passions across the biscuits of my own baking … and it will be lovely.
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