ABSTRACT
By PB Brontë Blow ye wild winds wild»1 blow Flow ye waters faster flow Spread around my weary eye One wide waving sea and sky Aloft the breezes fill my sail And bend its canvass to the gale Mid their own etherial dwelling Oer the Ocean proudly swelling See the billows round me now Dash against my cleaving prow Far and wide they sweep away Oer the rough and roaring see By Heaven! my heart beats high to day Lord of such a realm to be Monarch of the feirce and free But HI turn my eyes toward the skies And view the prospect their Where broad and bright the noonday light Sheds glory round the air I see yon mighty dome of heaven In deep cerulean hue The white clouds oer its concave driven Till lost amid the blue Then 111 turn my forehead to the blast And think upon the sea That chainless boundless restless waste Which shines so gloriously Thou only Lethe 2 for the past Sole Freedom for the free The winds are whistling in my hair As I gaze upon the main And view the Atlantic from his lair Aroused to rage again And view the horizon stretched afar Wide around the ambient air One mighty water weltring there Where I gaze and gaze again Waves of the Ocean how nobly ye roll Endless and aimless nor pathway nor goal Proudly ye thunder your white crests on high Shaking their foam to the spray beaten sky Winds of the Ocean your voices arise Shreik in my canvass and storm to the sky Ye tell me that life is an ocean of woe Where the feirce blasts of passion eternally blow Mans bark may be shattered or ride through the storm To rot on its anchor a feast for the worm Yes Battle may peal in its glorious thunder Oer the young Warriors closing day Yet if he lie the wet sod under Age must rot by dull decay Well!—Here I am and Afric’s shore Hath sunk beneath Old Oceans roar It seems as if but first even now Had set Leone’s 3 azure brow That hardly yet yon bounding line Conceals fair Gambias shores divine Not so!—a thousand leagues away I ride upon the raging sea And long long leagues of Ocean roar Between me and my native shore Oh all the scenes of lifetime past Far far behind me lie There tossing oer a stormy waste Who so lone as I I heard that wind it sighed to me Like memory of feelings gone Black blast! my heart responds to thee With mourning bitter as thine own And my own voice with hoarser tone Now strikes upon my startled ear It seems mid these wild waves unknown A thing I should not hear Tis the very voice of my Infancy The voice of my morning 4 young & free But whats that voice to do with me A wasted wanderer here Oh Afric Afric where art thou Even I can sorrow oer thee now Though ere I left thy smiling shore I knew my joy in life was oer Yes I had seen my Evening sun Set in a sullen sea of tears Had seen his course of daylight gone Gone lights and shadows hopes and fears Yes I had seen my day decline Never again to rise and shine It was not pleasure blighted It was not hope destroyed It was not for love slighted That made that dreary void And yet my pleasures all had flown All my hopes were dashed and gone And though none scorned the love I gave Yet Thou—the loved—wert in thy grave 5 Yes—Yet all these formed but the storm Which blackens oer even mornings sky My Misery was of darker form Of deadlier deeper dye These were the various streams that flow Into my deep deep sea of woe The shreiking blast the pelting 6 rain May strike the shattered oak in vain Storm can yon scathed trunk yeild the victory Go spend thy fury on the yong green tree Oh when I was a little child Upon my Mothers knee With what a burst of pleasure wild I gazed upon the sea I stretched my arms toward its face And wept to meet its proud embrace And when amid youths earliest day I paced the foamwhite shore I smiled to see the wildwaves play And joyed to hear them roar But now!—where am I—? on that sea Where I so often longed to be Now!—But away this bitter pain Shall Percy’s heart so oft complain The waves around my vessel sweep And cover her with foam Yet though they shake the shattered ship They still shall bear her home The sleep which shuts the watchful eye Mid dangers threatning near Though helplessly the sleeper lie Still quiets all his care The Night which darknes[sic] oer the earth Mid daylights deep decline Shall give a glorious morrow birth In mornings light divine But thou Stem Midnight of my soul With thy dread darkness closing round Ye storms of strife which oer me roll Where have you hope or rest or bound Well!—Roll ye waves of ocean roll 0Close clouds of sorrow oer my soul I care not 7 if your fatal blight Shall shade this mind in lasting night Yet while one streak of sunshine 8 lies Behind the far dun twilight skies Permit the wanderers lingering gaze To fix upon its fading rays The wretch whom naught from death can save Still grasps the grass around his grave The lion mid the Hunters toils Glares madness from his eye Nets and dogs and lances foils Though lost to liberty Ever through life when we look back We see some sunshine oer our track They falsly speak who say we spy Naught but joys before our eye No all the future path to me Seems beat by storms of misery And scenes alone long past away Can struggle through with distant ray Through his short and hurried span Pleasure only follows man Yet still when weariedly he dies He dreams before him in the skys He sees its happy Paradise Oh what is man? 9 a wretched being Tossed upon the tide of time All its rocks and whirlpools seeing Yet denied the power of fleeing Waves and gulphs of woe and crime Doomed from lifes first bitter breath To launch upon a sea of death Without a hope without a stay To guide him on his dreary way See that wrecked and shattered baric Drifting through the storm Oct the ocean drear and dark Drives its shattered form Where those sails which late (»1 high Swelled amid the shining sky Where those masts which braved the gale Towering oer the swelling sail Where the glasslike deck below Where the guilt 10 and glorious prow How that vessel lately shone Heaven and ocean all its own Where are they sunk in the surging sea Shivered and shattered and vanished away Where are they sawst thou the shreiking gale Tear from the yardarms the swelling sail Sawst the Mast in the strife of the storm Bend to the billows its statly form Hark to that crash as the foam and the spray Force oer the deck in a boiling sea Deep in the waters the curling prow Bursts on rocks that lurk treacherous below And There then! its glory all vanished & gone There then it drifts mid die tempest alone And now as they cling to the shivring mast As sickning they shrink from the shrill screaming blast How do the hearts of the mariners brave The Heaven and the Ocean the wind and the wave Aye! How have the hopes & the sunshine of life Stood gainst its darkness & dangers and strife What thinks fond man when—these dangers all oer Stranded he lies on deaths desolate shore View him thus sickned palsied and lone Where is his strength and his beauty gone I am a MAN—yes I have seen Each change upon lifes changing sea I launched upon lifes mighty sea As free as fair as proud as thee And I am on the track which thou And thine and mine are drifting now Well when I first launched from eternity Upon this undiscovered sea Hope shone forth with glorious ray Blazing round my dawning day Expectations eager gale Swelled and sounded in my sail Ambitions ever rousing power Urged me on in mornings hour And Love thy wide and welcome light Ever shone before my sight Beauty strength and youth divine All the heaven of mind was mine When I saw the expanse before me When I saw the glory oer me Oh how little did I dream Heaven and glory all a dream Life alone with its midnight sea Howled on in stem reality Sleeper awake thy dream that[sic] gone Now thou art on Ocean all alone I did awake and round the sky Wild I cast my frighted eye Where is the love and hope and light Vanished—vanished from my sight And now I am on the wild wild sea Not a hope to shine on me The winds arise and the stormy skys Snatch my daylight from my eyes Ambitions sails which bore me on Shiver in the blast they seemed to have won And Glory!—Aye thou welcome wave Dash that illusion to its grave! But save oh ruthless ocean save Save love alone that only power Which can amid this gloomy hour Like one mild star amid the sky Beam comfort on my misery No—life though all its oceans roll Can never part thee from my soul Thou quenchless in this heart shalt lie With this heart alone to die Well be it so—the pealing blast Howls wilder gainst the quivering mast With what a sweep the surge and spray Thunder oer the billowy sea A gloomier tempest darknes down Love survives—but the loved is gone! Gone—One hopeless endless sea Oer me beats unceasingly Severed cordage masts and sail I drive before the slackning gale The storm has past but the shattered oak Has fallen before the storm Trunk and branches cracked and broke <While beneath> the lightnings stroke A black and blasted form O Mary! when I closed thy eye When I beheld the[e] slowly die When thou before me silent lay A loveless lifeless form of clay When I saw thy coffined form Decked to feast the gnawing worm When the dull sod oer thee thrown Hid thee from my tearless eye When they laid the marble stone Above where thou must ever lie Twas then my Mary then alone I felt what ‘twas to—Die! Oh long long years may lie before me A thousand woes may darken oer me And ere I lay me down to die Old age may strike this anguished eye Yet through this wide wide waste of years This channelled gulph of burning tears Aye if I live till earths decay Is crumbling in its latest day If thousand winters wintriest snow Fall blighted oer my stricken brow Still through yon vast eternity I know that Thou const never be Lost for ever lost to me That all thy woes and joys are oer That thou art Dead gone long before And I shall never never see Thee more!
