The Silver Sage
Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]
Storm or Circumstance?
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Spellbound
(Emily Brontë, 1818–1848)
The night is darkening round me, The giant trees are bending Clouds beyond clouds above me, |
I feel a cold chill across my shoulders when I read the poem “Spellbound” by Emily Brontë. It is physically disturbing to me.
All three Brontë sisters lived in a dark and chilling era, their lives punctuated by death, loneliness, and emotional suffering. They lost mother, aunt, sisters, and a beloved brother to the Grim Reaper at young ages. Their father was an accomplished, but seemingly remote, man. As children with highly imaginative minds, they created worlds of fictional people and places that later appeared as characters and locations in their writings.
In 1846, the three sisters, Anne, Emily, and Charlotte, published a joint collection of their poetic works. All three used masculine pen names because of prejudice against female authors. Emily’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, was written under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Following Emily’s death at the ripe old age of 30, the elder and only surviving sister, Charlotte, author of Jane Eyre, edited and republished Emily’s novel. This allowed the world to recognized a female, Emily Brontë, as an author of great aptitude.
Read Emily’s poem “Spellbound,” and ask yourself if you feel the trees bending under the weight of cold, burdensome snow? Do you hear the chill, wild wind cautioning you to physically move away? Or is the “storm” a situation that has trapped the writer within circumstances that she is unable to escape, thereby making her powerless—or unwilling—to move or go?
I invite you to express your opinion.
By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog
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