Come, Walk With Me

Victoria Magazine September, 1990

Come, Walk With Me

Come, walk with me, 

There's only thee 

To bless my spirit now - 

We used to love on winter nights

To wander through the snow; 

Can we not woo back old delights?

The clouds rush dark and wild 

They fleck with shade our mountain heights

The same as long ago 

And on the horizon rest at last

In looming masses piled; 

While moonbeams flash and fly so fast

We scarce can say they smiled - 

Come walk with me, come walk with me;

We were not once so few

But Death has stolen our company

As sunshine steals the dew -

He took them one by one and we 

Are left the only two; 

So closer would my feelings twine

Because they have no stay but thine - 

'Nay call me not - it may not be

Is human love so true? 

Can Friendship's flower droop on for years

And then revive anew? 

No, though the soil be wet with tears, 

How fair soe'er it grew

The vital sap once perished

Will never flow again 

And surer than that dwelling dread,

The narrow dungeon of the dead 

Time parts the hearts of men -' 

Emily Jane Brontë

A portrait of Emily
 made by her brother

Emily Jane Brontë (30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) has been called one of the great English lyric poets and has found admirers among other poets. Emily was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.

In 1846 was puplished Poems by Currer, Ellis and Action Bell, paid for by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, contained twenty-one poems by Emily and by Anne and nineteen by Charlotte. Charlotte edited Emily's poems and rewrote some for the 1850 edition of her sisters' poems and novels. She included seventeen previously unpublished poems from Emily's manuscripts and one poem not found in Emily's manuscript ("Often rebuked, yet always back returning").