But when he stood at his castle gate,
Three lordly blows he struck it straight;
Three angry blows he struck thereon,
Which made them tremble every one.
The clerk he heard, and down he hied,
And opened at once the portal wide.
“Oh cursed cousin, that this should be!
Did I not trust my wife to thee?”
His spear down the traitor’s throat he drove,
Till out at his back the red point clove.
Then up he rushed to the bridal bower,
Where drooped his lady like some pale flower.
And ere she could speak a single word,
She fell at his feet beneath his sword.
VI.
“O holy priest! now tell to me
What didst thou up at the castle see?”
“I saw a grief and a terror more
Than ever I saw on earth before.
“I saw a martyr give up her breath,
And her slayer sorrowing e’en to death.”
“O holy priest! now tell to me
What didst thou down at the crossway see?”
“I saw a corpse that all mangled lay,
And the dogs and ravens made their prey.”
“Oh holy priest! now tell to me
What didst thou next in the churchyard see?”
“By a new-made grave, in soft moonlight,
I saw a fair lady clothed its white;
“Nursing a little child on her knee -
A dark red wound on his breast had he,
“A noble hound lay couched at her right,
A steed at her left of bonniest white;
“The first a gash in its throat had wide,
And this as deep a stab in its side.
“They raised their heads to the lady’s knee,
And they licked her soft hands tenderly.
“She gently patted their necks, the while
Smiling, though stilly, a fair sweet smile.
“The child, as it fain its love would speak,
Caressed and fondled its mother’s cheek.
“But down went the moon then silently,
And my eyes no more their forms could see;
“But I heard a bird from out the skies
Warbling a song of Paradise!”
SKETCHES AMONG THE POOR, NO. I
This poem in rhyming couplets of 153 lines was composed in the summer of 1836 and appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine the following January.
In childhood’s days, I do remember me
Of one dark house behind an old elm-tree,
By gloomy streets surrounded, where the flower
Brought from the fresher air, scarce for an hour
Retained its fragrant scent; yet men lived there,
Yea, and in happiness; the mind doth clear
In most dense airs its own bright atmosphere.
But in the house of which I spake there dwelt
One by whom all the weight of smoke was felt.
She had o’erstepped the bound ‘twixt youth and age
A single, not a lonely, woman, sage
And thoughtful ever, yet most truly kind:
Without the natural ties, she sought to bind
Hearts unto hers, with gentle, useful love,
Prompt at each change in sympathy to move.
And so she gained the affection, which she prized
From every living thing, howe’er despised--
A call upon her tenderness whene’er
The friends around her had a grief to share;
And, if in joy the kind one they forgot,
She still rejoiced, and more was wanted not.
Said I not truly, she was not alone,
Though none at evening shared her clean hearth-stone?
To some she might prosaic seem, but me
She always charmed with daily poesy,
Felt in her every action, never heard,
E’en as the mate of some sweet singing-bird,
That mute and still broods on her treasure-nest,
Her heart’s fond hope hid deep within her breast.
In all her quiet duties, one dear thought
Kept ever true and constant sway, not brought
Before the world, but garnered all the more
For being to herself a secret store.
Whene’er she heard of country homes, a smile
Came brightening o’er her serious face the while;
She knew not that it came, yet in her heart
A hope leaped up, of which that smile was part.
She thought the time might come, ere yet the bowl
Were broken at the fountain, when her soul
Might listen to its yearnings, unreproved
By thought of failure to the cause she loved;
When she might leave the close and noisy street,
And once again her childhood’s home might greet.
It was a pleasant place, that early home!
The brook went singing by, leaving its foam
Among the flags and blue forget-me-not;
And in a nook, above that shelter’d spot,
For ages stood a gnarled hawthorn-tree;
And if you pass’d in spring-time, you might see
The knotted trunk all coronal’d with flowers,
That every breeze shook down in fragrant showers;
The earnest bees in odorous cells did lie,
Hymning their thanks with murmuring melody;
The evening sun shone brightly on the green,
And seem’d to linger on the lonely scene.
And, if to others Mary’s early nest
Show’d poor and homely, to her loving breast
A charm lay hidden in the very stains
Which time and weather left; the old dim panes,
The grey rough moss, the house-leek, you might see
Were chronicled in childhood s memory;
And in her dreams she wander’d far and wide
Among the hills, her sister at her side--
That sister slept beneath a grassy tomb
Ere time had robbed her of her first sweet bloom.
0 Sleep! thou bringest back our childhood’s heart,
Ere yet the dew exhale, the hope depart;
Thou callest up the lost ones, sorrow’d o’er
Till sorrow’s self hath lost her tearful power;
Thine is the fairy-land, where shadows dwell,
Evoked in dreams by some strange hidden spell.
But Day and Waking have their dreams, 0 Sleep,
When Hope and Memory their fond watches keep;
And such o’er Mary held supremest sway,
When kindly labours task’d her hands all day.
Employ’d her hands, her thoughts roam’d far and free,
Till sense call’d down to calm reality.
A few short weeks, and then, unbound the chains
Which held her to another’s woes or pains,
Farewell to dusky streets and shrouded skies,
Her treasur’d home should bless her yearning eyes,
And fair as in the days of childish glee
Each grassy nook and wooded haunt should be.
Yet ever, as one sorrow pass’d away,
Another call’d the tender one to stay,
And, where so late she shared the bright glad mirth,
The phantom Grief sat cowering at the hearth.
So days and weeks pass’d on, and grew to years,
Unwept by Mary, save for others’ tears.
As a fond nurse, that from the mother’s breast
Lulls the tired infant to its quiet rest,
First stills each sound, then lets the curtain fall
To cast a dim and sleepy light o’er all,
So age drew gently o’er each wearied sense
A deepening shade to smooth the parting hence.
Each cherish’d acce
nt, each familiar tone
Fell from her daily music, one by one;
Still her attentive looks could rightly guess
What moving lips by sound could not express.
O’er each loved face next came a filmy veil,
And shine and shadow from her sight did fail.
And, last of all, the solemn change they saw
Depriving Death of half his regal awe;
The mind sank down to childishness, and they,
Relying on her counsel day by day
( As some lone wanderer, from his home afar,
Takes for his guide some fix’d and well known star,
Till clouds come wafting o’er its trembling light,
And leave him wilder’d in the pathless night),
Sought her changed face with strange uncertain gaze,
Still praying her to lead them through the maze.
They pitied her lone fate, and deemed it sad;
Yet as in early childhood was she glad;
No sense had she of change, or loss of thought,
With those around her no communion sought;
Scarce knew she of her being. Fancy wild
Had placed her in her father’s house a child;
It was her mother sang her to her rest;
The lark awoke her, springing from his nest;
The bees sang cheerily the live long day,
Lurking ‘mid flowers wherever she did play;
The Sabbath bells rang as in years gone by,
Swelling and falling on the soft wind’s sigh;
Her little sisters knelt with her in prayer,
And nightly did her father’s blessing share;
So, wrapt in glad imaginings, her life
Stole on with all her sweet young memories rife.
I often think (if by this mortal light
We e’er can read another’s lot aright),
That for her loving heart a blessing came,
Unseen by many, clouded by a name;
And all the outward fading from the world
Was like the flower at night, when it has furled
Its golden leaves, and lapped them round its heart,
To nestle closer in its sweetest part.
Yes! angel voices called her childhood back,
Blotting out life with its dim sorrowy track;
Her secret wish was ever known in heaven,
And so in mystery was the answer given.
In sadness many mourned her latter years,
But blessing shone behind that mist of tears,
And, as the child she deemed herself, she lies
In gentle slumber, till the dead shall rise.
The Non-Fiction
Gaskell, 1862
THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË
This posthumous biography was published in 1857. One of the major sources was the hundreds of letters sent by Brontë to her lifelong friend Ellen Nussey, which Gaskell spent many months sifting through. The biography is clear and often very telling, yet Gaskell suppressed details of Brontë’s love for Constantin Héger, a married man, due to contemporary morals and in fear of distressing Brontë’s still-living friends, father and husband.
Brontë in her twenties
THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTË
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
VOLUME II
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHAPTER XIV.
VOLUME I
CHAPTER I
The Leeds and Skipton railway runs along a deep valley of the Aire; a slow and sluggish stream, compared to the neighbouring river of Wharfe. Keighley station is on this line of railway, about a quarter of a mile from the town of the same name. The number of inhabitants and the importance of Keighley have been very greatly increased during the last twenty years, owing to the rapidly extended market for worsted manufactures, a branch of industry that mainly employs the factory population of this part of Yorkshire, which has Bradford for its centre and metropolis.
Keighley is in process of transformation from a populous, old-fashioned village, into a still more populous and flourishing town. It is evident to the stranger, that as the gable-ended houses, which obtrude themselves corner-wise on the widening street, fall vacant, they are pulled down to allow of greater space for traffic, and a more modern style of architecture. The quaint and narrow shop-windows of fifty years ago, are giving way to large panes and plate-glass. Nearly every dwelling seems devoted to some branch of commerce. In passing hastily through the town, one hardly perceives where the necessary lawyer and doctor can live, so little appearance is there of any dwellings of the professional middle-class, such as abound in our old cathedral towns. In fact, nothing can be more opposed than the state of society, the modes of thinking, the standards of reference on all points of morality, manners, and even politics and religion, in such a new manufacturing place as Keighley in the north, and any stately, sleepy, picturesque cathedral town in the south. Yet the aspect of Keighley promises well for future stateliness, if not picturesqueness. Grey stone abounds; and the rows of houses built of it have a kind of solid grandeur connected with their uniform and enduring lines. The frame-work of the doors, and the lintels of the windows, even in the smallest dwellings, are made of blocks of stone. There is no painted wood to require continual beautifying, or else present a shabby aspect; and the stone is kept scrupulously clean by the notable Yorkshire housewives. Such glimpses into the interior as a passer-by obtains, reveal a rough abundance of the means of living, and diligent and active habits in the women. But the voices of the people are hard, and their tones discordant, promising little of the musical taste that distinguishes the district, and which has already furnished a Carrodus to the musical world. The names over the shops (of which the one just given is a sample) seem strange even to an inhabitant of the neighbouring county, and have a peculiar smack and flavour of the place.
The town of Keighley never quite melts into country on the road to Haworth, although the houses become more sparse as the traveller journeys upwards to the grey round hills that seem to bound his journey in a westerly direction. First come some villas; just sufficiently retired from the road to show that they can scarcely belong to any one liable to be summoned in a hurry, at the call of suffering or danger, from his comfortable fireside; the lawyer, the doctor, and the clergyman, live at hand, and hardly in the suburbs, with a screen of shrubs for concealment.
In a town one does not look for vivid colouring; what there may be of this is furnished by the wares in the shops, not by foliage or atmospheric effects; but in the country some brilliancy and vividness seems to be instinctively expected, and there is consequently a slight feeling of disappointment at the grey neutral tint of every object, near or far off, on the way from Keighley to Haworth. The distance is about four miles; and, as I have said, what with villas, great worsted factories, rows of workmen’s houses, with here and there an old-fashioned farmhouse and out-buildings, it can hardly be called “country” any part of the way. For two miles the road passes over tolerably level ground, distant hills on the left, a “beck” flowing through meadows on the right, and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the factories built on its banks. The air is dim and lightless with the smoke from all these habitations and places of business. The soil in the
valley (or “bottom,” to use the local term) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the vegetation becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; and, instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about the dwellings. Stone dykes are everywhere used in place of hedges; and what crops there are, on the patches of arable land, consist of pale, hungry-looking, grey green oats. Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a back-ground of dun and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church, which is built at the very summit of the long narrow street. All round the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar colour and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors — grand, from the ideas of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator may be.
For a short distance the road appears to turn away from Haworth, as it winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill; but then it crosses a bridge over the “beck,” and the ascent through the village begins. The flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give a better hold to the horses’ feet; and, even with this help, they seem to be in constant danger of slipping backwards. The old stone houses are high compared to the width of the street, which makes an abrupt turn before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that the steep aspect of the place, in one part, is almost like that of a wall. But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quite little by-street that leads to Haworth Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of this lane, the school-house and the sexton’s dwelling (where the curates formerly lodged) on the other.
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