The Complete Poems of Emily Brontë/Oh might my footsteps find a rest!
VIII
O might my footsteps find a rest!
O might my eyes with tears run o'er!
O could the wound but leave my breast
To lapse in days that are no more!
And if I could in silence mourn
Apart from lying sympathy,
And man's remarks or sighs or scorn,
I should be where I wish to be.
For nothing nearer paradise
Ought for a moment to be mine:
I've far outlived such real joys—
I could not bear so bright a shine;
For I've been consecrate to grief—
I should not be if that were gone—
And all my prospect of relief
On earth would be to grieve alone!
To live in sunshine now would be
To live in every sweetest thought;
What I have been and seen below
Must first be utterly forgot.
And I can not forget the years
Gone by as if they'd never been;
Yet if I will remember—tears
Must always dim the dreary scene.
So there's no choice. However bright
May beam the blaze of July's sun,
'Twill only yield another sight
Of scenes and times for ever gone.
However young and lovely round
Fair forms may meet my cheerless eye,
They'll only hover o'er the ground
Where fairer forms in darkness lie;
And voices tuned to music's thrill,
And laughter light as marriage strain,
Will only wake a ghostly chill,
As if the buried spoke again.
All—all is over, friend or lover
Cannot awaken gladness here;
Though sweep the strings their music over,
No sound will rouse the stirless air.
I am dying away in dull decay,
I feel and know the sands are down,
And evening's latest, lingering ray
And last from my wild heaven is flown.
Not now I speak of things whose forms
Are hid by intervening years,
Not now I fear departed storms
For bygone griefs and dried-up tears.
I cannot weep as once I wept
Over my western beauty's grave,
Nor wake the word that long has slept
By Gambier's towers and trees and wave.
I am speaking of a later stroke,
A death the dream of yesterday;
I am thinking of my latest shock,
A noble friendship torn away.
I feel and say that I am cast
From hope, and peace, and power, and pride—
A withered leaf on Autumn blast;
A shattered wreck on ocean's tide,
Without a voice to speak to you
Save that deep gong which tolled my doom
And made my dread iniquity
Look darker than my deepest gloom;
Without companion save the light,
For ever present to my eye,
Of that tempestuous winter's night
That saw my angel Mary die.