Spellbound

Wilsonville in the Snow, originally uploaded by Martina.

On of my favorite things about the Academy of American Poets is that you can sign up with them for a Poem-A-Day email. I look forward to getting my email from them each day. It's a great way to find poetry that you have never read before. Today's poem was Emily Bronte's Spellbound, which I love for its quiet fortitude. Resolve is not about loudness but constancy. It always makes me think of how I felt when my father was dying. I was so tired, but could not leave him to go sleep myself for fear that he might die alone.

Reading it, I could almost convince myself that it was written as a reflection of my own feelings. But that's the beauty of poetry. Good poetry manages to somehow touch the eternal. It unlocks the gates of time, allowing a reader like me to share her own experiences of strife and grief with a woman who died over a hundred years before she was born. That is pretty powerful, when you think about it.

Spellbound
by Emily Brontë

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 dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.