Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (538 page)

SONNET I.

On Landseer’s Painting.

‘The Shepherd’s Chief Mourner’ — A Dog Keeping Watch at Twilight over its Master’s Grave.

The beams of Fame dry up affection’s tears;

And those who rise forget from whom they spring;

Wealth’s golden glories — pleasure’s glittering wing —

All that we follow through our chase of years —

All that our hope seeks — all our caution fears,

Dim or destroy those holy thoughts which cling

Round where the forms we loved lie slumbering;

But, not with
thee
— our slave — whose joys and cares

We deem so grovelling — power nor pride are thine,

Nor our pursuits, nor ties; yet, o’er this grave,

Where lately crowds the form of mourning gave,

I only hear
thy
low heart-broken whine —

I only see
thee
left long hours to pine

For
him
whom thou — if love had power — would’st save!

SONNET II.

On the Callousness produced by Care.

Why hold young eyes the fullest fount of tears?

And why do youthful hearts the oftenest sigh,

When fancied friends forsake, or lovers fly,

Or fancied woes and dangers wake their fears?

Ah! he who asks has known but spring-tide years,

Or Time’s rough voice had long since told him why!

Increase of days increases misery;

And misery brings selfishness, which sears

The heart’s first feelings: ‘mid the battle’s roar,

In Death’s dread grasp, the soldier’s eyes are blind

To comrades dying, and he whose hopes are o’er

Turns coldest from the sufferings of mankind;

A bleeding spirit oft delights in gore:

A tortured heart oft makes a tyrant mind.

SONNET III.

On Peaceful Death and Painful Life.

Why dost thou sorrow for the happy dead?

For, if their life be lost, their toils are o’er,

And woe and want can trouble them no more;

Nor ever slept they in an earthly bed

So sound as now they sleep, while dreamless laid

In the dark chambers of the unknown shore,

Where Night and Silence guard each sealed door.

So, turn from such as these thy drooping head,

And mourn the
Dead Alive
— whose spirit flies —

Whose life departs, before his death has come;

Who knows no Heaven beneath Life’s gloomy skies,

Who sees no Hope to brighten up that gloom, —

‘Tis
He
who feels the worm that never dies, —

The
real
death and darkness of the tomb.

It is painful to find the writer of these sad and beautiful sonnets spoken of in terms of reprobation, as being, at the time he wrote them, and when asking Mr. Grundy’s aid while seeking a situation, ‘sunk and contemptible.’

‘Alas,’ says Miss Robinson, ‘no helping hand rescued the sinking wretch from the quicksands of idle sensuality which slowly engulfed him!’
 
 
Let us look further.

The Afghan War, which commenced in 1838, and had secured for the English arms what seemed at the time a complete conquest, was followed by the conspiracy of Akbar Khan, the son of Dost Mohammed, which occurred at the beginning of winter, when help from India was hopeless. There was an uprising at Cabul, and several officers and men were slain, which compelled Major Pottinger to submit to humiliating conditions. The British left Cabul; and the disastrous retreat to India, through the Khyber Pass, which commenced on January 6th, 1842, will long be sadly remembered. Of sixteen thousand troops — accompanied by women and children to the number of ten thousand more — who were continually harassed by hostile tribes on the way, and benumbed by the severity of the winter, only one man, Doctor Brydon, survived to tell the tidings. Branwell, overwhelmed by these horrors, published the following powerful and impressive poem in the ‘Leeds Intelligencer,’ on May the 7th of the same year.

THE AFGHAN WAR.

‘Winds within our chimney thunder,

Rain-showers shake each window-pane,

Still — if nought our household sunder —

We can smile at wind or rain.

Sickness shades a loved one’s chamber,

Steps glide gently to and fro,

Still — ‘mid woe — our hearts remember

We
are there to soothe that woe.

‘Comes at last the hour of mourning,

Solemn tolls the funeral bell;

And we feel that no returning

Fate allows to such farewell:

Still a holy hope shines o’er us;

We wept by the One who died;

And ‘neath earth shall death restore us;

As round hearthstone — side by side.

‘But — when all at eve, together,

Circle round the flickering light,

While December’s howling weather

Ushers in a stormy night:

When each ear, scarce conscious, listens

To the outside Winter’s war,

When each trembling eyelash glistens

As each thinks of
one
afar —

Man to chilly silence dying,

Ceases story, song, and smile;

Thought asks — “Is the loved one lying

Cold upon some storm-beat isle?”

And with death — when doubtings vanish,

When despair still hopes and fears —

Though our anguish toil may banish,

Rest brings unavailing tears.

‘So, Old England — when the warning

Of thy funeral bells I hear —

Though thy dead a host is mourning,

Friends and kindred watch each bier.

But alas! Atlantic waters

Bear another sound from far!

Unknown woes, uncounted slaughters,

Cruel deaths, inglorious war!

‘Breasts and banners, crushed and gory,

That seemed once invincible;

England’s children — England’s glory,

Moslem sabres smite and quell!

Far away their bones are wasting,

But I hear their spirits call —

“Is our Mighty Mother hasting

To avenge her children’s fall?”

‘England rise! Thine ancient thunder

Humbled mightier foes than these;

Broke a whole world’s bonds asunder,

Gave thee empire o’er the seas:

And while yet one rose may blossom,

Emblem of thy former bloom,

Let not age invade thy bosom —

Brightest shine in darkest gloom!

‘While one oak thy homes shall shadow,

Stand like it as thou hast stood;

While a Spring greets grove and meadow,

Let not Winter freeze thy blood.

Till this hour St. George’s standard

Led the advancing march of time;

England! keep it streaming vanward,

Conqueror over age and clime!’

In this poem Branwell prefaces his subject with a picture of domestic suffering — one with which he is familiar — and compares the consolation which accompanies the affectionate attentions of those present, with the hopeless fate and untended deaths of such as perish in the storms and wars of distant places, far away from their homes and friends. In the true, loyal, and national spirit which animates him, his manly appeal to England, comprised principally in the last two verses, is perhaps one of the noblest and most vigorous ever written.

In the May of 1842, Leyland was commissioned to execute certain monuments for Haworth and its neighbourhood; and, on the 15th of that month, Branwell wrote to him, in reference to a design for a monument which he had sent for submission to a committee of which the Rev. P. Brontë was chairman, and invited him to the parsonage on the 20th of the month, being sure his father would be pleased to see him. Leyland visited Haworth and partook of Mr. Brontë’s hospitality; and in the evening, accompanied by the incumbent and his son, appeared before the monument committee.

Branwell also wrote an interesting letter to Mr. Grundy on May 22nd, 1842, which that gentleman erroneously assigns to 1845.
 
 
In it he says that he cannot avoid the temptation, while sitting alone, all the household being at church, and he being the sole occupant of the parsonage, to scribble a few lines to cheer his spirits. He alludes to the extreme pain, illness, and mental depression he has endured since his dismissal. He describes himself, while at Luddenden Foot, as a ‘miserable wreck,’ as requiring six glasses of whisky to stimulate him, as almost insane! And he feels his recovery from this last stage of his condition to be retarded by ‘having nothing to listen to except the wind moaning among old chimneys and older ash trees, — nothing to look at except heathery hills, walked over when life had all to hope for, and nothing to regret.’ He reproaches himself, in bitter terms, with seeking indulgence, while at Luddenden Foot, in failings which formed, he declares, the black spot on his character. His sister Charlotte’s mind appears to have been cast in the same gloomy mould; for, when suffering under bodily ailment, or the despondency and hopelessness which overshadowed her soul, she was impelled, as we have seen, to make confessions to her friend ‘E’ of her ‘stings of conscience,’ her ‘visitings of remorse.’ She hates her ‘former flippancy and forwardness.’ She is in a state of ‘horrid, gloomy uncertainty,’ and clouds are ‘gathering darker,’ and a more depressing despondency weighs upon her spirits.
 
 

In another letter to her friend, Charlotte says she is ‘in a strange state of mind — still gloomy, but not despairing. I keep trying to do right…. I abhor myself, I despise myself.’ And again, later, she wonders if the new year will be ‘stained as darkly as the last with all our sins, follies, secret vanities, and uncontrolled passions and propensities,’ saying ‘I trust not; but I feel in nothing better, neither humbler nor purer.’