The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/All her tresses backward strayed
XXIV
All her tresses backward strayed
Look golden in the gleam,
But her wan lips and sunken cheek
And full eyes eloquently speak
Of sorrows gathering near,
Till those dark orbs o'erflowing fast
Are shadowed by her hand at last
To hide the streaming tear.
Oh! say not that her vivid dreams
Are but the shattered glass
Which but because more broken gleams
Move brightly in the grass.
Her spirit is the unfathomed lake
Whose face the sudden tempests break
To one tormented roar;
But as the wild winds sink in peace
All those disturbèd waves decrease
Till each far-down reflection is
As lifelike as before.
She thought when that confession crossed
Upon her dying mind,
'Twas sense and soul and memory lost,
Though feeling burned behind.
But that bright heaven has touched a chord
And that wide west has waked a word
Can still the spirit's storm;
Till all the griefs that brought her here,
Each gushing with a bitterer tear,
Round her returning sight appear
In more tremendous form.
In glimpses of a spirit shore
The strength of eyesight to restore
Which coming death denied;
That while the world was lost to her
Her soul might rove a wanderer
Through visional wonders wide.
And strange it is how oft in death,
When reason leaves the brain,
What sudden power the fancy hath
To seize the falling rein.
It cannot hold a firm control,
But it can guide the parting soul,
Half leading and half led,
Through dreams where startling imagery
Hide with their feigned reality
The tossed and fevered bed.
It seems as to the bleeding heart
With dying torments riven
A quickened life in every part
By fancy's force was given.
And all these dim, disjointed dreams
Wherewith the failing memory beams
Are but the bright reflection
Flashed upward from the scattered glass
Of mirror broken on the grass,
Which shapeless figures on each piece
Reveals without connection.
And is her mirror broke at last
Who motionless is laid . . .
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