![["The lady of Alzerno’s hall"], p. 9](https://www.themorgan.org/sites/default/files/facsimile/download/80096v_0009.jpg){kind=link}
Collection of poems : autograph manuscript signed : [Haworth]
The Henry Houston Bonnell Brontë Collection. Bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969
[“The lady of Alzerno’s hall”] (pp. 9–12)
This untitled poem was presumably intended as the second part of the previous poem, “The Parting.” Brontë noted two dates at the end: the first, 1837, is the fictional date of composition by Alexandrina Zenobia; the second, 10 July 1838, is Brontë’s own date of composition (the day after she completed “The Parting”). First published in Poems (1902), pp. 192–94, with the incorrect title “The Lady of Abyerno’s Hall.” Published in The Complete Poems of Anne Brontë (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920) with the title “The Parting,” part II. Poem 7 in Chitham (1979); pp. 459–61 in Alexander (2010).
1
The lady of Alzerno’s hall,
Is waiting for her lord,
The black-bird[’]s song the cuckoo[’]s call,
No joy to her afford,
She smiles not at the summer’s sun,
Nor at the winter’s blast,
She mourns that she is still alone,
Though three long years have passed.
2
I knew her when her eye was bright,
I knew her when her step was light,
And blithesome as a mountain doe’s,
And when her cheek was like the rose,
And when her voice was full and free,
And when her smile was sweet to see,
3
But now the luster of her eye,
Is* dimmed with many a tear;
Her footstep’s elasticity,
Is tamed with grief and fear;
The rose has left her hollow cheeks;
*Note: Chitham (1979) transcribes the starred word as “So,” but the manuscript reads “Is.”
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 BronteMA2696_5.pdf | 20.04 MB |