The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/The night of storms has past
VI
The night of storms has past;
The sunshine bright and clear
Gives glory to the verdant waste,
And warms the breezy air.
And I would leave my bed,
Its cheering smile to see,
To chase the visions from my head,
Whose forms have toubled me.
In all the hours of gloom
My soul was rapt away;
I stood by a marble tomb
Where royal corpses lay.
It was just the time of eve,
When parted ghosts might come,
Above their prisoned dust to grieve
And wail their woeful doom.
And truly at my side
I saw a shadowy thing,
Most dim, and yet its presence there
Curdled my blood with ghastly fear
And ghastlier wondering.
My breath I could not draw,
The air seemed uncanny;
But still my eyes with maddening gaze
Were fixed upon its fearful face,
And its were fixed on me.
I fell down on the stone,
But could [not] turn away;
My words died a voiceless moan
When I began to pray.
And still it bent above,
Its features full in view;
It seemed close by and yet more far
Than this world from the farthest star
That tracks the boundless blue.
Indeed 'twas not the space
Of earth or time between,
But the sea of deep eternity,
The gulf o'er which mortality
Has never, never been.
Oh, bring not back again
The horror of that hour!
When its lips opened and a sound
Awoke the stillness reigning round,
Faint as a dream, but the earth shrank,
And heaven's lights shivered 'neath its power.
Woe for the day! Regina's pride,
Regina's hope is in the grave;
And who shall rule my land beside,
And who shall save?
Woe for the day! with gory tears
My countless sons this day shall rue;
Woe for the day! a thousand years
Cannot repair what one shall do.
Woe for the day! 'twixt rain and wind
That sad lament was ringing;
It almost broke my heart to hear
Such dreamy, dreary singing.
June 10, 1837, E. J. Brontë.