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قراءة كتاب The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2
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The Brontë Family, with special reference to Patrick Branwell Brontë. Vol. 2 of 2
verses in 1842:
THE EPICUREAN'S SONG.
'The visits of Sorrow
Say, why should we mourn?
Since the sun of to-morrow
May shine on its urn;
And all that we think such pain
Will have departed,—then
Bear for a moment what cannot return;
'For past time has taken
Each hour that it gave,
And they never awaken
From yesterday's grave;
So surely we may defy
Shadows, like memory,
Feeble and fleeting as midsummer wave.
'From the depths where they're falling
Nor pleasure, nor pain,
Despite our recalling,
Can reach us again;
Though we brood over them,
Nought can recover them,
Where they are laid, they must ever remain.
'So seize we the present,
And gather its flowers,
For,—mournful or pleasant,—
'Tis all that is ours;
While daylight we're wasting,
The evening is hasting,
And night follows fast on vanishing hours.
'Yes,—and we, when night comes,
Whatever betide,
Must die as our fate dooms,
And sleep by their side;
For change is the only thing
Always continuing;
And it sweeps creation away with its tide.'
Here Branwell, writing, contrary to his custom, in a gay mood, forgets the failures of the past, diverting his mind from them by seeking serenity in the diversions which now and then lighten his path. He is perfectly conscious of the fleeting nature of earthly things; and, with that natural and felicitous faculty of versification with which his images and figures are invariably described, he invests the Epicurean with the hopes of the Optimist, or with the indifference of the Stoic to the shadows which ever and anon dim the pleasures of human existence. There is nothing assuredly in this lyric of the 'pulpit twang,' to which Miss Robinson refers, nor is it a 'weak and characterless effusion.'
To the year 1842 belongs the following song which in feeling reminds one of Burns' 'Auld Lang Syne.' The subject, however, is distinct, and is pervaded by a profound sentiment of enduring affection, and is expressive of the deepest feeling in reference to it.
SONG.
'Should life's first feelings be forgot,
As Time leaves years behind?
Should man's for ever changing lot
Work changes in the mind?
'Should space, that severs heart from heart,
The heart's best thoughts destroy?
Should years, that bid our youth depart,
Bid youthful memories die?
'Oh! say not that these coming years
Will warmer friendships bring;
For friendship's joys, and hopes, and fears,
From deeper fountains spring.
'Its feelings to the heart belong;
Its sign—the glistening eye,
While new affections on the tongue,
Arise and live and die.
'So, passing crowds may smiles awake
The passing hour to cheer;
But only old acquaintance' sake
Can ever form a tear.'
Leyland was himself a poet, as I have said, and a literary critic of ability and judgment. Branwell submitted some poems to him for opinion, and he advised his friend to publish them with his name appended, rather than under the pseudonym of 'Northangerland,' for he considered them creditable to his genius. But Branwell, on July 12th, 1842, writing to Leyland, asking some technical questions, says, in a postscript, 'Northangerland has so long wrought on in secret and silence that he dare not take your kind encouragement in the light which vanity would prompt him to do.'
On August 10th, 1842, he wrote to Leyland in reference to a monument, which that sculptor had recently put up at Haworth, and he concluded by saying:
'When you see Mr. Constable—to whom I shall write directly,—be kind enough to tell him that—owing to my absence from home when it arrived, and to the carelessness of those who neglected to give it me on my return,—I have only now received his note. Its injunctions shall be gladly attended to; but he would better please me by refraining from any slurs on the fair fame of Charles Freeman or Benjamin Caunt, Esquires.'
Branwell did not lose his early interest in the 'noble science,' but continued it with a half-serious constancy. Constable and Leyland regarded the pugilistic encounters of the 'Ring' as brutal and degrading, but Branwell always professed to defend its champions with energy and zeal; and in this letter he playfully alludes to two of them. Among his literary labours of the year 1842 is the following poem. It is entitled:
NOAH'S WARNING OVER METHUSALEH'S GRAVE.
'Brothers and men! one moment stay
Beside your latest patriarch's grave,
While God's just vengeance yet delay,
While God's blest mercy yet can save.
'Will you compel my tongue to say,
That underneath this nameless sod
Your hands, with mine, have laid to-day
The last on earth who walked with God?
'Shall the pale corpse, whose hoary hairs
Are just surrendered to decay,
Dissolve the chain which bound our years
To hundred ages passed away?
'Shall six-score years of warnings dread
Die like a whisper on the wind?
Shall the dark doom above your head,
Its blinded victims darker find?
'Shall storms from heaven without the world,
Find wilder storms from hell within?
Shall long-stored, late-come wrath be hurled;
Or,—will you, can you turn from sin?
'Have patience, if too plain I speak,
For time, my sons, is hastening by;
Forgive me if my accents break:
Shall I be saved and Nature die?
'Forgive that pause:—one look to Heaven
Too plainly tells me, he is gone,
Who long with me in vain had striven
For earth and for its peace alone.
'He's gone!—my Father—full of days,—
From life which left no joy for him;
Born in creation's earliest blaze;
Dying—himself, its latest beam.
'But he is gone! and, oh, behold,
Shown in his death, God's latest sign!
Than which more plainly never told
An Angel's presence His design.
'By it, the evening beams withdrawn
Before a starless night descend;
By it, the last blest spirit born
From this beginning of an end;
'By all the strife of civil war
That beams within yon fated town;
By all the heart's worst passions there,
That call so loud for vengeance down;
'By that vast wall of cloudy gloom,
Piled boding round the firmament;
By all its presages of