The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë, I know that to-night the wind it is sighing

LIX

I know that to-night the wind it is sighing,
The soft August wind, over forest and moor;
While I in a grave-like chill am lying
On the damp black flags of my dungeon floor.

I know that the harvest-moon is shining;
She neither will soar nor wane for me;
Yet I weary, weary, with vain repining,
One gleam of her heaven-bright face to see.

For this constant darkness is wasting the gladness,
Fast wasting the gladness of life away;
It gathers up thoughts akin to madness,
That never would cloud the world of day.

I chide with my soul—I bid it cherish
The feelings it lived on when I was free,
But sighing it murmurs, 'Let memory perish,
Forget, for my friends have forgotten me.'

Alas! I did think that they were weeping
Such tears as I weep—it is not so!
Their careless young eyes are closed in sleeping;
Their brows are unshadowed, undimmed by woe.

Might I go to their beds, I'd rouse that slumber,
My spirit should startle their rest and tell,
How hour after hour, I wakefully number,
Deep buried from light in my lonely cell!

Yet let them dream on; tho' dreary dreaming
Would haunt my pillow if they were here;
And I were laid warmly under the gleaming
Of that guardian moon and her comrade star.

Better that I my own fate mourning,
Should pine alone in this prison gloom;
Then waken free on the summer morning
And feel they were suffering this awful doom.

August 1845.

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