The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/How long will you remain? The midnight hour
XXXVII
How long will you remain? The midnight hour
Has tolled its last stroke from the minster tower.
Come, come; the fire is dead, the lamp burns low;
Your eyelids droop, a weight is on your brow;
Your cold hands hardly hold the weary pen:
Come; morn will give recovered strength again.
No; let me linger; leave me, let me be
A little longer in this reverie:
I'm happy now; and would you tear away
My blissful thought that never comes with day.
A vision dear, though false, for well my mind
Knows what a bitter waking waits behind.
Can there be pleasure in this shadowy room,
With windows yawning on intenser gloom,
And such a dreary wind so bleakly sweeping
Round walls where only you are vigil keeping?
Besides, your face has not a sign of joy,
And more than tearful sorrow fills your eye.
Look on those woods, look on that mountain lorn,
And think how changed they'll be to-morrow morn:
The doors of heaven expanding bright and blue;
The leaves, the green grass, sprinkled with the dew;
And white mists rising on the river's breast,
And wild birds bursting from their songless nest,
And your own children's merry voices chasing
The phantom ghost that pleasure has been raising.
Aye speak of these; but can you tell me why
Day breathes such beauty over earth and sky,
And waking sounds revive, restore again
To hearts that all night long have throbbed with pain?
Is it not that the sunshine and the wind
Lure from itself the woe-worn mind,
And all the joyous music breathing by,
And all the splendours of that cloudless sky,
Regive him shadowy gleams of infancy
And draw his tired gaze from futurity?
August 12, 1839.