Sympathy

There should be no despair for you
While nightly stars are burning;
While evening pours its silent dew,
And sunshine gilds the morning.
There should be no despair--though tears
May flow down like a river:
Are not the best beloved of years
Around your heart for ever?

They weep, you weep, it must be so;
Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And winter sheds its grief in snow
Where Autumn's leaves are lying:
Yet, these revive, and from their fate
Your fate cannot be parted:
Then journey on, if not elate,
Still, NEVER broken-hearted!

- Emily Bronte (1818-1848)

In a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day!

- Anne Bronte (1820-1849)

New Heart

Like a snake, my heart
has shed its skin.
I hold it there in my hand,
full of honey and wounds.

The thoughts that nested
in your folds, where are they now?
Where the roses that perfumed
both Jesus Christ and Satan

Poor wrapper that damped
my fantastical star,
parchment gray and mournful
of what I loved once but love no more!

I see fetal sciences in you,
mummified poems and bones
of my romantic secrets
and old innocence.

Shall I hang you on the wall
of my emotional museum,
beside my dark, chill,
sleeping irises of my evil?

Or shall I spread you over the pines
-- suffering book of my love --
so you can learn about the song
the nightingale offers the dawn?

- Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)