"The North Wind", p. 1

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Anne Brontë
1820–1849

Collection of poems : autograph manuscript signed : [Haworth]

1838 Jan. 24-1841 Aug. 19

The Henry Houston Bonnell Brontë Collection. Bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969

MA 2696.5
Description: 

“The North Wind” (pp. 1–3)

Composed 26 January 1838, a few days after Brontë’s eighteenth birthday. Written in the voice of Alexandrina Zenobia, a character in the Gondal saga. First published in Poems (1902), pp. 187–88. Poem 5 in Chitham (1979); pp. 455–57 in Alexander (2010).

Transcription: 

     The North Wind —

   ––––––––
That wind is from the North I know it well.
No other breeze could have so wild a swell.
Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell,
    Then faintly dies,
    And softly sighs,
And moans and murmers mournfully
I know its language thus it speaks to me —

“I have passed over thy own mountains dear,
Thy northern mountains – and they still are free,
Still lonely, wild, majestic, bleak, and drear,
And stern, and lovely, as they used to be

“When thou a young enthusiast,
As wild and free as they,
O’er rocks and glens and snowy heights
Didst often love to stray.

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