Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

 Loud without the wind was roaring
     Through th'autumnal sky;
     Drenching wet, the cold rain pouring,
     Spoke of winter nigh.
     All too like that dreary eve,
     Did my exiled spirit grieve.
     Grieved at first, but grieved not long,
     Sweet—how softly sweet!—it came;
     Wild words of an ancient song,
     Undefined, without a name.

     "It was spring, and the skylark was singing:"
     Those words they awakened a spell;
     They unlocked a deep fountain, whose springing,
     Nor absence, nor distance can quell.

     In the gloom of a cloudy November
     They uttered the music of May;
     They kindled the perishing ember
     Into fervour that could not decay.

     Awaken, o'er all my dear moorland,
     West-wind, in thy glory and pride!
     Oh! call me from valley and lowland,
     To walk by the hill-torrent's side!

     It is swelled with the first snowy weather;
     The rocks they are icy and hoar,
     And sullenly waves the long heather,
     And the fern leaves are sunny no more.

     There are no yellow stars on the mountain
     The bluebells have long died away
     From the brink of the moss-bedded fountain—
     From the side of the wintry brae.

     But lovelier than corn-fields all waving
     In emerald, and vermeil, and gold,
     Are the heights where the north-wind is raving,
     And the crags where I wandered of old.

     It was morning: the bright sun was beaming;
     How sweetly it brought back to me
     The time when nor labour nor dreaming
     Broke the sleep of the happy and free!

     But blithely we rose as the dawn-heaven
     Was melting to amber and blue,
     And swift were the wings to our feet given,
     As we traversed the meadows of dew.

     For the moors! For the moors, where the short grass
     Like velvet beneath us should lie!
     For the moors! For the moors, where each high pass
     Rose sunny against the clear sky!

     For the moors, where the linnet was trilling
     Its song on the old granite stone;
     Where the lark, the wild sky-lark, was filling
     Every breast with delight like its own!

     What language can utter the feeling
     Which rose, when in exile afar,
     On the brow of a lonely hill kneeling,
     I saw the brown heath growing there?

     It was scattered and stunted, and told me
     That soon even that would be gone:
     It whispered, "The grim walls enfold me,
     I have bloomed in my last summer's sun."

     But not the loved music, whose waking
     Makes the soul of the Swiss die away,
     Has a spell more adored and heartbreaking
     Than, for me, in that blighted heath lay.

     The spirit which bent 'neath its power,
     How it longed—how it burned to be free!
     If I could have wept in that hour,
     Those tears had been heaven to me.

     Well—well; the sad minutes are moving,
     Though loaded with trouble and pain;
     And some time the loved and the loving
     Shall meet on the mountains again!

The following little piece has no title; but in it the Genius of a solitary region seems to address his wandering and wayward votary, and to recall within his influence the proud mind which rebelled at times even against what it most loved.

     Shall earth no more inspire thee,
     Thou lonely dreamer now?
     Since passion may not fire thee,
     Shall nature cease to bow?

     Thy mind is ever moving,
     In regions dark to thee;
     Recall its useless roving,
     Come back, and dwell with me.

     I know my mountain breezes
     Enchant and soothe thee still,
     I know my sunshine pleases,
     Despite thy wayward will.

     When day with evening blending,
     Sinks from the summer sky,
     I've seen thy spirit bending
     In fond idolatry.

     I've watched thee every hour;
     I know my mighty sway:
     I know my magic power
     To drive thy griefs away.

     Few hearts to mortals given,
     On earth so wildly pine;
     Yet few would ask a heaven
     More like this earth than thine.

     Then let my winds caress thee
     Thy comrade let me be:
     Since nought beside can bless thee,
     Return—and dwell with me.

Here again is the same mind in converse with a like abstraction. “The Night-Wind,” breathing through an open window, has visited an ear which discerned language in its whispers.