Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (554 page)

THE END OF ALL.

‘In that unpitying Winter’s night,

When my own wife — my Mary — died,

I, by my fire’s declining light,

Sat comfortless, and silent sighed,

While burst unchecked grief’s bitter tide,

As I, methought, when she was gone,

Not hours, but years, like this must bide,

And wake, and weep, and watch alone.

‘All earthly hope had passed away,

And each clock-stroke brought Death more nigh

To the still-chamber where she lay,

With soul and body calmed to die;

But
mine
was not her heavenward eye

When hot tears scorched me, as her doom

Made my sick heart throb heavily

To give impatient anguish room.

‘“Oh now,” methought, “a little while,

And this great house will hold no more

Her whose fond love the gloom could while

Of many a long night gone before!”

Oh! all those happy hours were o’er

When, seated by our own fireside,

I’d smile to hear the wild winds roar,

And turn to clasp my beauteous bride.

‘I could not bear the thoughts which rose

Of what
had
been, and what
must
be,

And still the dark night would disclose

Its sorrow-pictured prophecy;

Still saw I — miserable me —

Long, long nights else, in lonely gloom,

With time-bleached locks and trembling knee —

Walk aidless, hopeless, to my tomb.

‘Still, still that tomb’s eternal shade

Oppressed my heart with sickening fear,

When I could see its shadow spread

Over each dreary future year,

Whose vale of tears woke such despair

That, with the sweat-drops on my brow,

I wildly raised my hands in prayer

That Death would come and take me now;

‘Then stopped to hear an answer given —

So much had madness warped my mind —

When, sudden, through the midnight heaven,

With long howl woke the Winter’s wind;

And roused in me, though undefined,

A rushing thought of tumbling seas

Whose wild waves wandered unconfined,

And, far-off, surging, whispered, “Peace.”

‘I cannot speak the feeling strange,

Which showed that vast December sea,

Nor tell whence came that sudden change

From aidless, hopeless misery;

But somehow it revealed to me

A life — when things I loved were gone —

Whose solitary liberty

Might suit me wandering tombward on.

‘‘Twas not that I forgot my love —

That night departing evermore —

‘Twas hopeless grief for her that drove

My soul from all it prized before;

That misery called me to explore

A new-born life, whose stony joy

Might calm the pangs of sorrow o’er,

Might
shrine
their memory, not destroy.

‘I rose, and drew the curtains back

To gaze upon the starless waste,

And image on that midnight wrack

The path on which I longed to haste,

From storm to storm continual cast,

And not one moment given to view;

O’er mind’s wild winds the memories passed

Of hearts I loved — of scenes I knew.

‘My mind anticipated all

The things my eyes have seen since then;

I heard the trumpet’s battle-call,

I rode o’er ranks of bleeding men,

I swept the waves of Norway’s main,

I tracked the sands of Syria’s shore,

I felt that such strange strife and pain

Might me from living death restore.

‘Ambition I would make my bride,

And joy to see her robed in red,

For none through blood so wildly ride

As those whose hearts before have bled;

Yes, even though
thou
should’st long have laid

Pressed coldly down by churchyard clay,

And though I knew thee thus decayed,

I
might
smile grimly when away;

‘Might give an opiate to my breast,

Might dream: — but oh! that heart-wrung groan

Forced from me with the thought confessed

That all would go if
she
were gone;

I turned, and wept, and wandered on

All restlessly — from room to room —

To that still chamber, where alone

A sick-light glimmered through the gloom.

‘The all-unnoticed time flew o’er me,

While my breast bent above her bed,

And that drear life which loomed before me

Choked up my voice — bowed down my head.

Sweet holy words to me she said,

Of that bright heaven which shone so near,

And oft and fervently she prayed

That I might some time meet her there;

‘But, soon enough, all words were over,

When this world passed, and Paradise,

Through deadly darkness, seemed to hover

O’er her half-dull, half-brightening eyes;

One last dear glance she gives her lover,

One last embrace before she dies;

And then, while he seems bowed above her,

His
Mary
sees him from the skies.’

Another poem of Branwell’s of this date, the last he ever wrote, is entitled ‘Percy Hall,’ which he did not live to complete. The first draft was sent for Leyland’s opinion, with the following letter:

‘Haworth, Bradford,
‘Yorks.

‘My dear Sir,

‘I enclose the accompanying fragment, which is so soiled that I would have transcribed it, if I had had the heart to exert myself, only in order to get from you an opinion as to whether, when finished, it would be worth sending to some respectable periodical, like “Blackwood’s Magazine.”

‘I trust you got safely home from rough Haworth, and am,

‘Dear Sir,

‘Your most sincerely,

‘P. B. Brontë.’

At the foot of the page on which the letter is written, is drawn, in pen-and-ink, a low, massive, stone cross, inscribed with the word, ‘POBRE!’ standing on the top of a bleak hill, with a wild sky behind; and Branwell says of it below: ‘The best epitaph ever written. It is carved on a rude cross in Spain, over a murdered traveller, and simply means “Poor fellow!”‘ It will be remembered, in connection with this idea of Branwell’s, that Lord Byron, in one of his letters, describes the impression produced upon him by seeing the inscription, ‘Implora pace!’ upon a tomb at Bologna. The poet says: ‘When I die, I should wish that some friend would see these words, and no other, placed above my grave — “Implora pace!”‘ The perusal of this remark induced Mrs. Hemans to write her pathetic little poem which has the Italian epitaph for its title.

This letter of Branwell’s is particularly interesting, because it shows us that, even in the last year of his life, and when dealing with the last uncompleted poem he ever wrote, he preserved the ambition of appearing in the literary world as a poet; and because he again speaks of ‘Blackwood’s Magazine,’ whose value, it will be remembered, had impressed itself upon the youthful minds of himself and his sisters.

The fragment, ‘Percy Hall,’ which was enclosed with the letter to Leyland, though still morbid, is one of the most exquisite its author wrote. Here, by a strange and beautiful coincidence — if coincidence it be — we find Branwell, in his latest work, as in his youthful ones, given in the earlier part of this work, occupied with the dread study of a consumptive decline; we find him, in short, tinctured with the shadows of his later career, telling again of the death of that sister, whose memory he cherished with a life-long affection; and perhaps, too, with a deeper insight than the other members of his family possessed, he foretells the end that awaited his sisters Emily and Anne, from that disease, whose poison was working in his own slender frame. The treatment of the subject, indeed, is truly characteristic of Branwell’s feelings at the time, and of his impressions engendered by the mournful malady with which his family was afflicted. This poem, like some of those already noticed in the former pages of the present work, is distinguished by images, scenes, and conceptions, almost invariably animated by the instinctive power and originality of genius. His descriptions of the condition of the lady, of the way in which weakness has schooled her to regard the future — the natural expression doubtless of Branwell at the time — of the influences that ‘forbade her heart to throb, her spirit to despond,’ and of the agonized feelings of the survivor, are all instinct with the living breath of reality; they have the sublime dignity of truth, springing, as they do, from a knowledge far too intimate with the sorrows which inspired the poem. Perhaps, in the gaiety of the affectionate Percy, Branwell depicts, in some sort, his own disposition, though it has never been charged against him that he was beguiled by ‘syren smiles,’ or seduced by the delights of ‘play.’ It seems to me that Branwell’s poetical genius is as much higher than that of his sister Emily as hers was superior to the talents of Charlotte and Anne, in their versified productions. Beautiful, wild, and touching, like strains from the harp of Æolus, as are the emanations of Emily’s poetical inspiration, they lack the force, depth, and breadth of Branwell’s more expansive power of imagination, as displayed in his best productions; though even Branwell’s poetical remains contain rather the evidence of power than the full expression of it.

PERCY HALL.