“Long have I dwelt forgotten here In pining woe and dull despair; This place of solitude and gloom Must be my dungeon and my tomb.” PoetrySolitudeDespair Book:The Bronte Sisters: Selected Poems Source: The Bronte Sisters: Selected Poems
“My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry—and often find it, too—whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.” PoetryPrayerSorrowMelancholy Book:Agnes Grey Source: Agnes Grey
“Well, let them seize on all they can;— One treasure still is mine,— A heart that loves to think on thee, And feels the worth of thine.” LovePoetry Book:Agnes Grey Source: Agnes Grey
“Though solitude, endured too long, Bids youthful joys too soon decay, Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, And overclouds my noon of day; When kindly thoughts that would have way, Flow back discouraged to my breast; I know there is, though far away, A home where heart and soul may rest. Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, The warmer heart will not belie; While mirth, and truth, and friendship shine In smiling lip and earnest eye. The ice that gathers round my heart May there be thawed; and sweetly, then, The joys of youth, that now depart, Will come to cheer my soul again.” PoetryFriendshipSolitude Book:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell Source: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell