A True Poem about the End of Grieving

Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte

In addition to my regular classes, I am also teaching a course on novels by Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte at a local retirement center. The class has 15 students, all of them women, and I began it with several poems by Emily Bronte, the best poet of the sisters. A lyric about grieving hit home.

The poem is called “Remembrance” and was written by Emily for the Gondal stories, the fictional fantasy world that she and Anne created. In it a woman wrestles with what to do with the fact that she is beginning to forget her love, who has died fifteen years before. Memory is being buried by time like a gravesite buried by snow. “Sweet love, forgive if I forget thee/While the earth’s tide is bearing me along,” begs the speaker.

Here’s the poem:

Remembrance

Cold in the earth — and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my Only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?

Cold in the earth — and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring;
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion —
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in Memory’s rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

“Now, this is a poem that is true,” said one of the women in the class who had been silent up to that moment.Another pointed out that many of the women in the room were widows and had wrestled with these issues. Some of these women have never remarried—which is to say, in the words of the poem, no later light has lightened up their heavens, no second morning has ever shone for them. The fact that they were impressed with the poem is a supreme compliment.  They were not about to accept a false account from the 20-something Emily.

They understood what it was like to “indulge in Memory’s rapturous pain” and drink deep of “divinest anguish.” They also understood how, with the passage of time, “other desires and other hopes” enter in. They appreciated the speaker saying having new desires and hopes did not “wrong” the departed.

We had questions about the passage, “Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,/ Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.” Yes, existence could indeed continue to be cherished, strengthened and fed after death. But what about “without the aid of joy”? Was the departed lover the only source of joy?

We weren’t entirely sure what to make of the last stanza. We wondered whether the mourner has really accepted the death of her love and moved on.  Perhaps she is just trying to convince herself because she does not want to face the empty world all over again—emptiness that threatens to consume her if she “dares” let her thoughts return. We agreed that the speaker may not be quite as resigned to the death as she at first appears.

In other words, the poem posed some of the toughest questions one can face. Real poetry is not wimps.

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