Spellbound   Emily Bronte

The night is darkening round me,

The wild winds coldly blow;

But a tyrant spell has bound me

And I cannot, cannot go.

 

The giant trees are bending

Their bare boughs weighed with snow.

And the storm is fast descending,

And yet I cannot go.

 

Clouds beyond clouds above me,

Wastes beyond wastes below;

But nothing drear can move me;

I will not, cannot go.

This is quite a cold winter, or it seems so. The supplies of wood for the heater have been rapidly dwindling and I may have to buy a new load soon. At nights if it is clear I sometimes steal outside for a few minutes. The sky is absolutely crystalline, shorn of any distortion. If there are clouds, they tend be scudding through the heavens, the moon and stars appearing and disappearing as if manipulated by a conjurer.

Unlike the poet in 'Spellbound', there is no snow here, but the sensation of wanting to linger in the dark and the cold is palpable. The Brontes were such a talented lot, though Emily is best known for Wuthering Heights, though she wrote quite a lot of verse.

This poem is due for an outing on Writers, methinks.