"The Bluebell", p. 16

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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 Bluebell” (pp. 15–18)

Composed 22 August 1840, when Brontë was twenty. First published in Poems (1902), pp. 198–200. Poem 10 in Chitham (1979).

Transcription: 

A bright and sunny day
’Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leauges away;

That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed

Before me rose a lofty hill
Behind me lay the Sea
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be,

Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and f laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.

But as* I looked upon the bank

*Note: Chitham (1979) transcribes the starred word as “when,” but the manuscript reads “as.”

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