The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/I do not see myself again
LXI
I do not see myself again
A wanderer o'er the Atlantic main;
I do not backward turn my eye
T'wards sleepless sea and stormy sky.
Oh no; these brighter visions vast
To woodlands of the west have past;
And there shall Hesperus arise
To watch my treasure where it lies.
The present lands, the present clime,
Forbid the dreams of olden time;
The present thoughts, the present hour,
Are rife with deeds of sterner power:
And who shall be my leading star
Amid the howling storm of war?
Hark! listen to the distant gun
From the battlefield of Edwordston;
It breaks upon the awful roar
Which stuns my ears around,
And makes the shout of victory
Strike with a hollow sound.
My struggles all are crowned with power,
And Fortune gives a glorious hour.
Men who hate me kneel before me,
Men who kneel are forced t'adore me;
My name is on a million tongues,
The million babble on my wrongs;
And twenty years of tyrant pride
Which strove this modern God to hide,
At last have vanished in the rays
Of his unquenched, unclouded blaze,
Oh! is not Jesus come again
Over his thousand saints to reign?
To free the world from tyrant's chain,
While sin and hatred vainly spit
Their venomed fury, as they sit.
Their reign is past, their power is gone,
For fallen is mighty Babylon.
Through the hoarse howling of the storm
I saw, but did I truly see
One glimpse of that unearthly form
Whose very form is Victory?
'Twas but a glance, and all seems past,
For cares like clouds again return,
And I'll forget him till the blast
For ever from my soul has flown—
That vision of a mighty host
Crushed helpless into earth and Dust!
Forget him! In the cannon's smoke
How dense it thickens, till on high,
By the wild storm blasts roughly broke,
It parts in volumes through the sky
That hurriedly are drifting by,
'Till the dread burst breaks forth once more
With whitening clouds which seem to fly
Affrightened from that ceaseless roar.
And there it lightens! Dashed with gore
The thick of battle rends in twain,
While their rough ranks of bristling steel
Flashing afar, while armed men
In mighty masses loud and vast,
Like the wild waters of the main
Lashed into foam.—When, there again
Behold him!