From Retrospection

by Charlotte Bronte

　　We wove a web in childhood,

　　A web of sunny air;

　　We dug a spring in infancy

　　Of water pure and fair;

　　We sowed in youth a mustard seed,

　　We cut an almond rod;

　　We are now grown up to riper age-

　　Are they withered in the sod?

　　Are they blighted, failed and faded,

　　Are they mouldered back to clay?

　　For life is darkly shaded;

　　And its joys fleet fast away.

　　Faded! the web is still of air,

　　But how its folds are spread,

　　And from its tints of crimson clear

　　How deep a glow is shed.

　　The light of an Italian sky.

　　Where clouds of sunset lingering lie

　　Is not more ruby-red.

　　But the spring was under a mossy stone,

　　Its jet may gush no more.

　　Hark! sceptic bid thy doubts be gone,

　　Is that a feeble roar

　　Rushing around thee? Lo! the tide

　　Of waves where armed fleets may ride

　　Sinking and swelling, frowns and smiles

　　An ocean with a thousand isles

　　And scare a glimpse of shore.

　　The mustard-seed in distant land

　　Bends down a mighty tree,

　　The dry unbudding almond-wand

　　Has touched eternity.

　　There came a second miracle

　　Such as on Aaron's sceptre fell,

　　And sapless grew like life from heath,

　　Bud, bloom and fruit in mingling wreath

　　All twined the shrivelled off-shoot round

　　As flowers lie on the lone grave-mound.

　　Dream that stole o'er us in the time

　　When life was in its vernal clime,

　　Dream that still faster o'er us steals

　　As the wild star of spring declining

　　The advent of that day reveals,

　　That glows in Sirius fiery shining:

　　Oh! as thou swellest, and as the scenes

　　Cover this cold world's darkest features,

　　Stronger each change my spirit weans

　　To bow before thy god-like creatures.

　　When I sat 'neath a strange roof-tree

　　With nought I knew or loved round me

　　Oh how my heart shrank back to thee,

　　Then I felt how fast thy ties had bound me.