Although The Brontes have long fascinated readers of fiction and biography, their poetry was all too little known until this pioneering selection by Stevie Davies, the novelist and critic. Charlotte (1816-1855) is certainly a competent poet, and Anne (1820-1849) developed a distinctive voice, while Emily (1818-1848) is one of great women poets in English.

All three sisters, as Stevie Davies remarks in her introduction, were Romantic in inspiration, writing poetry of passionate personal feeling and of pure imagination. They share certain themes - liberty, loneliness, love - and harbour the myth of a lost paradise. Read together with their novels, the poems movingly elucidate the ideas around which the narratives revolve. And they surprise us out of our conventional notions of the sisters' personalities: Emily's rebelliousness, for example, is counterbalanced here by great tenderness.

This selection gives an idea of the variety of thought and feeling within each author's work, and of the way in which the poems of these three remarkable writers parallel and reflect each other.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Brontes as Poets

Charlotte Bronte

Emily Jane Bronte

Anne Bronte



Poems by Charlotte Bronte



Lines Addressed to 'The Tower of All Nations'

Written upon the Occasion of the Dinner Given to the Literati of the Glasstown

Home-Sickness

from Retrospection

The Wounded Stag

'Turn not now for comfort here'

The Teacher's Monologue

Diving

Gods of the Old Mythology

Parting

Preference

Morning

Master and Pupil

Reason

'He saw my heart's woe, discovered my soul's anguish'

On the Death of Emily Jane Bronte

On the Death of Anne Bronte



  Poems by Emily Jane Bronte

'High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending'

'All day I've toiled, but not with pain'

'I am the only being whose doom'

'Only some spires of bright green grass'

'Now trust a heart that trusts in you'

A.G.A. ('Sleep brings no joy to me')

'I'll come when thou art saddest'

'I'm happiest when most away'

Song ('King Julius left the south country')

'And now the house-dog stretched once more'

'Shed no tears o'er that tomb'

A.A.A. ('Sleep not, dream not; this bright day')

Song ('O between distress and pleasure')

'There was a time when my cheek burned'

'"Well, some may hate, and some may scorn"'

'It is too late to call thee now'

'Riches I hold in light esteem'

'Shall Earth no more inspire thee'

'Aye, there it is! It wakes to-night'

How Clear She Shines!

'In the earth, the earth, thou shalt be laid'

A.G.A. to A.S. ('This summer wind, with thee and me')

'Come, walk with me'

To Imagination

'O thy bright eyes must answer now'

The Philosopher's Conclusion

R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida ('Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!')

'Death, that struck when I was most confiding'

'Ah! Why, because the dazzling sun'

'How beautiful the Earth is still'

from Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle

8'No coward soul is mine'

'Why ask to know what date, what clime?'

Stanzas ('Often rebuked, yet always back returning')





  Poems by Anne Bronte

A Voice from the Dungeon

The North Wind

Verses to a Child

Retirement

Despondency

To Cowper

A Word to the 'Elect'

Past Days

A Reminiscence

A Prayer

Night

Dreams

If this be All

Song ('We know where deepest lies the snow')

Song ('Come to the banquet; triumph in your songs!')

Oh, They Have Robbed Me of the Hope

Domestic Peace

Severed and Gone

Farewell to Thee! But Not Farewell



Index of Last Lines



Notes