Emily Brontë. Three love poems for her 200 years

Today, July 30, we celebrate a new birthday of Emily Brontë, the English novelist and poet, belonging to one of the most famous and brilliant literary lines of the Saxon letters. A very special celebration because they are 200 years. It will be eternally remembered as author of that classic of Victorian romantic literature that is Wuthering Heights, his only novel. But it is also necessary to highlight his poetic facet less known, or overshadowed, due to his magnitude as a novelist. Therefore, I rescue these three Love Poems yours to praise your memory once more.

Emily Brontë

Born on July 30, 1818 en Thornton, Yorkshire, is next to her sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) Y Anne (Agnes Gray), one of the main references of Victorian romantic literature. Her existence, like that of her sisters, was marked by a difficult childhood, very introverted character, the early loss of her mother and older sisters, the austerity of an Anglican pastor father and the troubled life of his younger brother branwell. Just lived 30 years and left a meager but immeasurable literary legacy in its quality and subsequent influence.

poems

With a germ born from an imaginary world called Gondal, which he shared with his sister Anne, the poems of love by Emily Brontë they mix an overflowing feeling and the essence of romanticism poetry with many of the characteristics that would later become fundamental in the victorian poetry.

Also, the bill and intensity of his characters and verses are precedents of what would later be his passage to the novel with Wuthering Heights. Specifically, the characters of Heatcliff, Catherine Earnshow or Edgar Linton are already recognized in some. But before those poems were jointly published by the three sisters under male pseudonyms. And although they were unsuccessful, they planted the seed.

These are three of them signed by Emily.

Come walk with me

Come walk with me
only you have blessed immortal soul.
We used to love the winter night
Wandering through the snow without witnesses.
Will we go back to those old pleasures?
Dark clouds rush
overshadowing the mountains
just like many years ago,
until I die on the wild horizon
in gigantic stacked blocks;
as the moonlight rushes on
like a furtive, nocturnal smile.

Come, walk with me;
not long ago we existed
but death has stolen our company
(Like the dawn steals the dew)
One by one he took the drops into the void
until there were only two left;
but my feelings still flash
for in you they remain fixed.

Don't claim my presence
Can human love be that true?
Can the flower of friendship die first
and revive after many years?
No, although with tears they are bathed,
The burial mounds cover its stem,
The life sap has faded
and the green will never come back.
Safer than the final horror
inevitable like the underground rooms
where the dead live and their reasons,
Time, relentless, separates all hearts.

***

The grave of my lady

The bird dwells in the rugged dawn,
The lark traces the air in silence,
The bee dances among the bells of the heather
That they hide my beautiful Lady.

The wild deer on his chest coldly,
Wild birds raise their warm wings;
And She smiles at everyone indifferently,
They have left her alone in her solitude!

I assumed that when the dark wall of his grave
Retained its delicate and feminine form,
No one would evoke the happiness that cuts
The ephemeral Light of joy.

They thought the wave of sadness would pass
Leaving no trace in future years;
But where are all the anguishes now?
And where those tears?

Let them fight for the honor of the breath,
Or for the dark and strong pleasure,
The Dweller of the Land of Death
It is fickle and indifferent too.

And if your eyes are to watch and cry
Until the source of pain runs dry
She will not return -from her peaceful sleep-
Nor will it return our vain sighs.

Blow, west wind, over the barren mound:
Murmur, streams of summer!
No need for other sounds
To guard my lady in her rest.

***

When should i sleep

Oh, in the hour when I must sleep,
I will do it without identity,
And I won't care how the rain falls anymore
Or if the snow covers my feet.
Heaven promises no wild wishes
They can be fulfilled, perhaps half.
Hell and its threats,
With its inextinguishable embers
He will never submit this will.

Therefore I say, repeating the same thing,
Still, and until I die I will say:
Three Gods within this little frame
They war day and night.
Heaven won't keep them all, though
They cling to me;
And they will be mine until oblivion
Cover the rest of me.

Oh, when time seeks my chest to dream,
All battles will end!
For the day will come when I must rest,
And this suffering will no longer torment me.