Poet · Victorian
Emily Brontë
English poet · 1818–1848
Emily Brontë lived almost her whole life at the parsonage in Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire moors that fill everything she wrote. When her sister Charlotte stumbled on her secret notebook of verses in 1845, she judged them "not at all like the poetry women generally write" — condensed, vigorous, and wild.
The sisters' joint collection, Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), sold exactly two copies. The next year "Ellis Bell" published Wuthering Heights; the year after that, Emily was dead of tuberculosis at 30, having refused a doctor almost to the end.
Her defiant credo "No Coward Soul Is Mine" was read at Emily Dickinson's funeral — one fierce private poet saluting another.
14 poems by Emily Brontë
Full text, free to read — all in the public domain.
- A Day DreamOn a sunny brae, alone I lay…72 lines
- A Little Budding RoseIt was a little budding rose,…18 lines
- Come hither, childCome hither, child — who gifted thee…32 lines
- DeathDeath! that struck when I was most confiding…32 lines
- Faith and DespondencyThe winter wind is loud and wild,…70 lines
- HopeHope was but a timid friend;…20 lines
- How still, how happy!How still, how happy! Those are words…32 lines
- Love and FriendshipLove is like the wild rose-briar,…12 lines
- StarsAh! why, because the dazzling sun…48 lines
- SympathyThere should be no despair for you…16 lines
- The Night is Darkening Around MeThe night is darkening round me,…12 lines
- 'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight'Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,…12 lines
- No Coward Soul Is MineThe following are the last lines my sister Emily ever wrote.…29 lines
- RemembranceCold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,…33 lines