The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home
XLVII
Ladybird! ladybird! fly away home,
Night is approaching, and sunset is come;
The Herons are flown to their trees by the Hall;
Felt, but unseen, the damp dewdrops fall.
This is the close of a still summer day;
Ladybird! ladybird! haste! fly away!
The grand old Hall is wrapped in shade,
The woodland park around it spread,
In gathering gloom in every glade,
This is the moment, this the hour,
To feel romance in all her power.
Is there not something in a name?
In noble blood, and ancient fame,
Something in that ancestral pride
Which brings the memory of the dead
Sailing adown times hoary tide,
With sacred halos round it shed?
Halos! O far too bright to shine
Round ought whose home is still below,
The starlight thoughts, the dreams divine,
From man's creative soul that flow,
And stream upon the Idols bright
He forms through all his earthly way,
As if grown weary of the light
That smiles upon his own dull clay,
That clay he feels will not for ever
'Cumber the spirit that would soar
To that deep and swelling river
Which bears the life tree on its shore;
And he the hour would still foresee
That sets his inward angel free.
This Hall and park might wake such dreams,
They speak of pride, of ancestry;
Yes! every fading ray which gleams
On antique roof and hoary tree,
Shows in gnarled bough and mossy slate
The grand remains of ancient state.
And thinks he of Patrician pride,
He who sits lonely there,
Where oaks and elms spread dark and wide
Their huge arms in the air?
He wanders in the world of thought,
He's left this world behind;
On that high brow are clearly wrought
A thousand dreams of mind.
And are they dreams of bliss or bale,
Of happiness or woe?
Methinks that face is all too pale
For pleasure's rosy glow.
Methinks the mellowing haze of years
Is over that tall form spread,
And time has poured her smiles and tears
Full freely round that head.
He must have once been beautiful,
The relics still remain;
Though wasted sore with sorrow,
And darkened much with pain.
At morn he sought this lone retreat,
When the sun first crowned the hill,
And now the twilight calm and sweet
Beholds him lingering still.
Yet not to reveries of woe
Clings Percy's wounded spirit so:
Scarce bound by its worn chains of clay,
The soul has almost soared away.
Lightened and soothed insensibly
By the lone home of wind and tree,
Where now his mental broodings dwell,
Vainly would man divine or tell.
His upward look, his earnest eyes,
Seem gazing e'en beyond the skies.
Who calls him back to earth again,
Will bring a wild revulse of pain.
And so thought he who glided now,
With step as light as falling snow,
Forth from the bowery arch of trees,
That whispered in the gloaming breeze.
That step he might have used before
When stealing on to lady's bower,
Forth at the same still twilight hour,
For the moon now beaming mild above
Showed him a son of war and love.
His eye was full of that sinful fire
Which oft unhallowed passions light.
It spoke of quickly kindled ire,
Of love too warm, and wild, and bright.
Bright, but yet sullied, love which could never
Bring good in rising, leave peace in decline,
Woe to the gifted, crime to the giver,
Wherever reposed all the light of its shine.
Beauty had lavished her treasures upon him,
Youth's early sunshine was poured on his brow:
Alas! that the magic of sin should have won him;
But he is her slave, and her chained victim now.
Now from his curled and shining hair,
Circling the brow of marble fair,
His dark, keen eyes on Percy gaze
With stern, and yet repenting rays.
Sometimes they shimmer through the haze
Of sadly gushing tears,
And then a sudden flash of flame,
Speaking wild feelings none could tame,
The dim suffusion clears.
Young savage! how he bends above
The object of his wrath and love,
How tenderly his fingers press
The hand that shrinks from their caress,
And from his lips in Percy's ear
Flow tones his blood congeals to hear.
Those tones were softer than the moan
Of echo when the sound is flown,
And sweeter than a flute's reply
To skylark's song, or wild wind's sigh.
Yet Percy heard them as they fell,
Like the dull toll of a passing bell.
Sternly they summoned him back again
To a dark world of woe and pain.
The blood from his visage fell away
And left it as pallid as coffined clay.
Like clouds the charmèd visions broke,
From his daylong dream at once he woke;
He woke to feel and see at his side
The very man who dared to roll
This dark unsounded briny tide
Over the Eden of his soul;
Who dared to pluck his last fair flower,
To quench his last star's cheering beam,
The last sweet drop of bliss to sour
That mingled with his being's stream.
Up rose he, and stretched forth his hand,
In mingled menace and command;
With voice subdued and steady look,
Thus to the man of sin he spoke:
'What brought you hear? I called you not;
You've tracked me to a lonely spot.
Are you a hawk to follow the prey,
When mangled it flutters feebly away?
A sleuthhound to track the deer by his blood,
When wounded he wins to the darkest wood,
There if he can to die alone?'
Unsought by the archer whose shaft has flown
So right and true to its living mark
That it quenches e'en now the vital spark,
Zamorna is this nobly done,
To triumph o'er your Consort's sire,
Gladly to see his gory sun
Quench in the sea of tears its fire?
But haply you have news to tell,
Tidings that yet may cheer me well;
You've crushed at last my rose's bloom,
And scattered its leaves on her mother's tomb.