The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow,
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
~Emily Bronte
I have to confess that I have always been fascinated by the Bronte sisters. Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. She did not live to be very old, dying of tuberculosis when she was only 30 years old.
The Bronte family were a nineteenth-century literary family associated with the village of Haworth in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England. The sisters, Charlotte, Emily , and Anne, are well known as poets and novelists. They originally published their poems and novels under masculine pseudonyms, following the custom of the times practiced by female writers. Their stories immediately attracted attention, although not always the best, for their passion and originality. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was the first to know success, while Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and other works were later to be accepted as masterpieces of literature.
I think it's amazing that so much talent resided in the minds of just this one family . .. enduring talent which has survived the test of time. To this day those three novels are deemed as classics and have all been immortalized in both film and television.
The three sisters and their brother, Branwell, were very close and they developed their childhood imaginations through the collaborative writing of increasingly complex stories. The confrontation with the deaths first of their mother then of their two older sisters marked them profoundly and influenced their writing.
Their fame was due as much to their own tragic destinies as to their precociousness. Since their early deaths, and then the death of their father in 1861, they were subject to a following that did not cease to grow. Their home, the parsonage at Haworth in Yorkshire, now the Brontë Parsonage Museum has become a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
It is my dream that one day I can travel to Haworth and visit this home myself, having long been a fan of their writings.
Don't you just love this photo of Mitzie? I do. She is such a beautiful dog. She's not feeling very well this morning so I am going to go and cuddle her for a while. I am hoping that she will feel better soon. Sorry for the short visit today, but alas . . . it can't be helped.
I'll leave you with a thought for the day and be off . . .
"As you walk and eat and travel, be where you are. Otherwise you will miss most of your life."
~Buddah
Delicious scrumminess in The English Kitchen today . . . with Baked Granola Doughnuts with a Honey Glaze!
Wherever you go today,
Whatever you do . . .
May happiness find
and uplift you. (Ok . . . so a poet I'm not!)
Happy Day all!
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