Lyric Poem · Nature
The Night is Darkening Around Me
by Emily Brontë
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 ;
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.
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“The Night is Darkening Around Me” by Emily Brontë — quilloak.com/poems/the-night-is-darkening-around-me
Quick facts
- Poem
- The Night is Darkening Around Me
- Poet
- Emily Brontë
- Length
- 12 lines
- Form
- Lyric Poem
- Themes
- Nature, Winter
Craft notes
How this poem works
Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.
- Shape
- 12 lines · 3 quatrains
- End rhyme
- ABAB in every stanza — alternate rhyme.
- Line length
- Lines run 6-8 syllables (median 7). No single length dominates, which is normal once elision and contraction are in play.
Want the rules this form is measured against? Read what makes a lyric poem, or run your own draft through the form checker to see the same measurements on your lines. How we measure · Report a mistake
Text, source & rights
A traceable edition
Full-text display is based on the committed source record and a United States term-expiry review.
- Author record
- Emily Brontë1818–1848
- Source record
- PoetryDBThe Night is Darkening Around Me by emily-bronte, PoetryDB transcription
- Display decision
- Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
- Publication record
- Not recorded in the imported source
- Text fingerprint
- SHA-256 ad63d4246329e6e6…
- Editorial handling
- Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.
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