Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes

by Bronte Sisters

  CHAPTER XIV.

  POEMS ON ‘CAROLINE.’

  The Poetical bent of Branwell’s Genius — ’Caroline’s Prayer’ — ’On Caroline’ — ’Caroline’ — Spirit of these Early Effusions.

  While Branwell was occupying his leisure as stated in the last chapter, and otherwise employing himself in a desultory way, he pursued the poetic bent of his genius, and sought the improvement of his diction and verse. Among the earliest of his poetical productions, the following are, perhaps, the best. They are distinguished by a similar train of thought and reflection, and by similar sentiments of piety and devotion, as also by the same gloom and sadness of mood, which pervade the poems of his sisters. Indeed, without knowing they were actually Branwell’s, we might easily believe them to be from the pen of Charlotte, Emily, or Anne.

  The three following poetical essays are on ‘Caroline,’ under which name Branwell indicates his sister Maria; and, in two of them, he records his reminiscences of her death and funeral obsequies. The first of the three, which he has framed in the sentiments and words of a child, is entitled:

  CAROLINE’S PRAYER,

  OR THE CHANGE FROM CHILDHOOD TO WOMANHOOD.

  ‘My Father, and my childhood’s guide!

  If oft I’ve wandered far from Thee;

  E’en though Thine only Son has died

  To save from death a child like me;

  ‘O! still — to Thee when turns my heart

  In hours of sadness, frequent now —

  Be Thou the God that once Thou wert,

  And calm my breast, and clear my brow.

  ‘I’m now no more a little child

  O’ershadowed by Thy mighty wing;

  My very dreams seem now more wild

  Than those my slumbers used to bring.

  ‘I further see — I deeper feel —

  With hope more warm, but heart less mild;

  And former things new shapes reveal,

  All strangely brightened or despoiled.

  ‘I’m entering on Life’s open tide;

  So — farewell childhood’s shores divine!

  And, oh, my Father, deign to guide,

  Through these wide waters, Caroline!’

  The second is:

  ON CAROLINE.

  ‘The light of thy ancestral hall,

  Thy Caroline, no longer smiles:

  She has changed her palace for a pall,

  Her garden walks for minster aisles:

  Eternal sleep has stilled her breast

  Where peace and pleasure made their shrine;

  Her golden head has sunk to rest —

  Oh, would that rest made calmer mine!

  ‘To thee, while watching o’er the bed

  Where, mute and motionless, she lay,

  How slow the midnight moments sped!

  How void of sunlight woke the day!

  Nor ope’d her eyes to morning’s beam,

  Though all around thee woke to her;

  Nor broke thy raven-pinioned dream

  Of coffin, shroud, and sepulchre.

  ‘Why beats thy breast when hers is still?

  Why linger’st thou when she is gone?

  Hop’st thou to light on good or ill?

  To find companionship alone?

  Perhaps thou think’st the churchyard stone

  Can hide past smiles and bury sighs:

  That Memory, with her soul, has flown;

  That thou canst leave her where she lies.

  ‘No! joy itself is but a shade,

  So well may its remembrance die;

  But cares, life’s conquerors, never fade,

  So strong is their reality!

  Thou may’st forget the day which gave

  That child of beauty to thy side,

  But not the moment when the grave

  Took back again thy borrowed bride.’

  Here Branwell, though he has changed the form of expression and the circumstance of the loss, is still occupied with the same theme of family bereavement, with which Charlotte herself was so much impressed.

  The following was intended as the first canto of a long poem. It also is entitled, ‘Caroline;’ and is the soliloquy of one ‘Harriet,’ who mourns for her sister, the subject of the poem, calling to mind her early recollection of the death and funeral of the departed one. It is extremely probable that Branwell made ‘Harriet’ a vehicle of expression for Charlotte or Emily, as he had adopted the name of ‘Caroline’ for Maria.

  CAROLINE.

  ‘Calm and clear the day declining,

  Lends its brightness to the air,

  With a slanted sunlight shining,

  Mixed with shadows stretching far:

  Slow the river pales its glancing,

  Soft its waters cease their dancing,

  As the hush of eve advancing

  Tells our toils that rest is near.

  ‘Why is such a silence given

  To this summer day’s decay?

  Does our earth feel aught of Heaven?

  Can the voice of Nature pray?

  And when daylight’s toils are done,

  Beneath its mighty Maker’s throne.

  Can it, for noontide sunshine gone,

  Its debt with smiles repay?

  ‘Quiet airs of sacred gladness

  Breathing through these woodlands wild,

  O’er the whirl of mortal madness

  Spread the slumbers of a child:

  These surrounding sweeps of trees

  Swaying to the evening breeze,

  With a voice like distant seas,

  Making music mild.

  ‘Woodchurch Hall above them lowering

  Dark against the pearly sky,

  With its clustered chimneys towering,

  Wakes the wind while passing by:

  And in old ancestral glory,

  Round that scene of ancient story,

  All its oak-trees, huge and hoary,

  Wave their boughs on high.

  ‘‘Mid those gables there is one —

  The soonest dark when day is gone —

  Which, when autumn winds are strongest,

  Moans the most and echoes longest.

  There — with her curls like sunset air,

  Like it all balmy, bright, and fair —

  Sits Harriet, with her cheek reclined

  On arm as white as mountain snow;

  While, with a bursting swell, her mind

  Fills with thoughts of “Long Ago.”

  ‘As from yon spire a funeral bell,

  Wafting through heaven its mourning knell,

  Warns man that life’s uncertain day

  Like lifeless Nature’s must decay;

  And tells her that the warning deep

  Speaks where her own forefathers sleep,

  And where destruction makes a prey

  Of what was once this world to her,

  But which — like other gods of clay —

  Has cheated its blind worshipper:

  With swelling breast and shining eyes

  That seem to chide the thoughtless skies,

  She strives in words to find relief

  For long-pent thoughts of mellowed grief.

  ‘“Time’s clouds roll back, and memory’s light

  Bursts suddenly upon my sight;

  For thoughts, which words could never tell,

  Find utterance in that funeral bell.

  My heart, this eve, seemed full of feeling,

  Yet nothing clear to me revealing;

  Sounding in breathings undefined

  Æolian music to my mind:

  Then strikes that bell, and all subsides

  Into a harmony, which glides

  As sweet and solemn as the dream

  Of a remembered funeral hymn.

  This scene seemed like the magic glass,

  Which bore upon its clouded face

  Strange shadows that deceived the eye

  With forms defined uncertainly;
>
  That Bell is old Agrippa’s wand,

  Which parts the clouds on either hand,

  And shows the pictured forms of doom

  Momently brightening through the gloom:

  Yes — shows a scene of bygone years —

  Opens a fount of sealed-up tears —

  And wakens memory’s pensive thought

  To visions sleeping — not forgot.

  It brings me back a summer’s day,

  Shedding like this its parting ray,

  With skies as shining and serene,

  And hills as blue, and groves as green.

  ‘“Ah, well I recollect that hour,

  When I sat, gazing, just as now,

  Toward that ivy-mantled tower

  Among these flowers which wave below!

  No — not these flowers — they’re long since dead,

  And flowers have budded, bloomed, and gone,

  Since those were plucked which gird the head

  Laid underneath yon churchyard stone!

  I stooped to pluck a rose that grew

  Beside this window, waving then;

  But back my little hand withdrew,

  From some reproof of inward pain;

  For she who loved it was not there

  To check me with her dove-like eye,

  And something bid my heart forbear

  Her favourite rosebud to destroy.

  Was it that bell — that funeral bell,

  Sullenly sounding on the wind?

  Was it that melancholy knell

  Which first to sorrow woke my mind?

  I looked upon my mourning dress

  Till my heart beat with childish fear,

  And — frightened at my loneliness —

  I watched, some well-known sound to hear.

  But all without lay silent in

  The sunny hush of afternoon,

  And only muffled steps within

  Passed slowly and sedately on.

  I well can recollect the awe

  With which I hastened to depart;

  And, as I ran, the instinctive start

  With which my mother’s form I saw,

  Arrayed in black, with pallid face,

  And cheeks and ‘kerchief wet with tears,

  As down she stooped to kiss my face

  And quiet my uncertain fears.

  ‘“She led me, in her mourning hood,

  Through voiceless galleries, to a room,

  ‘Neath whose black hangings crowded stood,

  With downcast eyes and brows of gloom,

  My known relations; while — with head

  Declining o’er my sister’s bed —

  My father’s stern eye dropt a tear

  Upon the coffin resting there.

  My mother lifted me to see

  What might within that coffin be;

  And, to this moment, I can feel

  The voiceless gasp — the sickening chill —

  With which I hid my whitened face

  In the dear folds of her embrace;

  For hardly dared I turn my head

  Lest its wet eyes should view that bed.

  ‘But, Harriet,’ said my mother mild,

  ‘Look at your sister and my child

  One moment, ere her form be hid

  For ever ‘neath its coffin lid!’

  I heard the appeal, and answered too;

  For down I bent to bid adieu.

  But, as I looked, forgot affright

  In mild and magical delight.

  ‘“There lay she then, as now she lies —

  For not a limb has moved since then —

  In dreamless slumber closed, those eyes

  That never more might wake again.

  She lay, as I had seen her lie

  On many a happy night before,

  When I was humbly kneeling by —

  Whom she was teaching to adore:

  Oh, just as when by her I prayed,

  And she to heaven sent up my prayer,

  She lay with flowers about her head —

  Though formal grave-clothes hid her hair!

  Still did her lips the smile retain

  Which parted them when hope was high,

  Still seemed her brow as smoothed from pain

  As when all thought she could not die.

  And, though her bed looked cramped and strange,

  Her too bright cheek all faded now,

  My young eyes scarcely saw a change

  From hours when moonlight paled her brow.

  And yet I felt — and scarce could speak —

  A chilly face, a faltering breath,

  When my hand touched the marble cheek

  Which lay so passively beneath.

  In fright I gasped, ‘Speak, Caroline!’

  And bade my sister to arise;

  But answered not her voice to mine,

  Nor ope’d her sleeping eyes.

  I turned toward my mother then

  And prayed on her to call;

  But, though she strove to hide her pain,

  It forced her tears to fall.

  She pressed me to her aching breast

  As if her heart would break,

  And bent in silence o’er the rest

  Of one she could not wake:

  The rest of one, whose vanished years

  Her soul had watched in vain;

  The end of mother’s hopes and fears,

  And happiness and pain.

  ‘“They came — they pressed the coffin lid

  Above my Caroline,

  And then, I felt, for ever hid

  My sister’s face from mine!

  There was one moment’s wildered start —

  One pang remembered well —

  When first from my unhardened heart

  The tears of anguish fell:

  That swell of thought which seemed to fill

  The bursting heart, the gushing eye,

  While fades all present good or ill

  Before the shades of things gone by.

  All else seems blank — the mourning march,

  The proud parade of woe,

  The passage ‘neath the churchyard arch,

  The crowd that met the show.

  My place or thoughts amid the train

  I strive to recollect, in vain —

  I could not think or see:

  I cared not whither I was borne:

  And only felt that death had torn

  My Caroline from me.

  ‘“Slowly and sadly, o’er her grave,

  The organ peals its passing stave,

  And, to its last dark dwelling-place,

  The corpse attending mourners bear,

  While, o’er it bending, many a face

  ‘Mongst young companions shows a tear.

  I think I glanced toward the crowd

  That stood in musing silence by,

  And even now I hear the sound

  Of some one’s voice amongst them cry —

  ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life —

  He who believes in me shall never die!’

  ‘“Long years have never worn away

  The unnatural strangeness of that day,

  When I beheld — upon the plate

  Of grim death’s mockery of state —

  That well-known word, that long-loved name,

  Now but remembered like the dream

  Of half-forgotten hymns divine,

  My sister’s name — my Caroline!

  Down, down, they lowered her, sad and slow,

  Into her narrow house below:

  And deep, indeed, appeared to be

  That one glimpse of eternity,

  Where, cut from life, corruption lay,

  Where beauty soon should turn to clay!

  Though scarcely conscious, hotly fell

  The drops that spoke my last farewell;

  And wild my sob, when hollow rung

  The first cold clod above he
r flung,

  When glitter was to turn to rust,

  ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!’

  ‘“How bitter seemed that moment when,

  Earth’s ceremonies o’er,

  We from the filled grave turned again

  To leave her evermore;

  And, when emerging from the cold

  Of damp, sepulchral air,

  As I turned, listless to behold

  The evening fresh and fair,

  How sadly seemed to smile the face

  Of the descending sun!

  How seemed as if his latest race

  Were with that evening run!

  There sank his orb behind the grove

  Of my ancestral home,

  With heaven’s unbounded vault above

  To canopy his tomb.

  Yet lingering sadly and serene,

  As for his last farewell,

  To shine upon those wild woods green

  O’er which he’d loved to dwell.

  ‘“I lost him, and the silent room,

  Where soon at rest I lay,

  Began to darken, ‘neath the gloom

  Of twilight’s dull decay;

  So, sobbing as my heart would break,

  And blind with gushing eyes,

  Hours seemed whole nights to me awake,

  And day as ‘twould not rise.

  I almost prayed that I might die —

  But then the thought would come

  That, if I did, my corpse must lie

  In yonder dismal tomb;

  Until, methought, I saw its stone,

  By moonshine glistening clear,

  While Caroline’s bright form alone

  Kept silent watching there:

  All white with angel’s wings she seemed,

  And indistinct to see;

  But when the unclouded moonlight beamed

  I saw her beckon me,

  And fade, thus beckoning, while the wind

  Around that midnight wall,

  To me — now lingering years behind —

  Seemed then my sister’s call!

  ‘“And thus it brought me back the hours

  When we, at rest together,

  Used to lie listening to the showers

  Of wild December weather;

  Which, when, as oft, they woke in her