Bronte 2
Bronte 2
Bronte 2
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.
The last stanza ups the ante a bit more. Repetition shows up that they arent just underneath the clouds, but clouds beyond clouds. Theyre not just in the middle of nowhere, theyre surrounded by wastes beyond wastes. This mention of wastes makes me think of the Moors, the area of England where Emily Bronte and her siblings grew up, and where many of her stories and poems are set. Still, surrounded by all these clouds and wastes, they cant move. However, heres the big surprise ending. The first two stanzas repeated the idea that the speaker cannot move, cannot get the heck out of this awful storm. But now, in the third stanza, somethings different. One word has changed. Now this person WILL not go. Why not? What does that one little word change?
Sound Check
The meter in this poem is a little trickier than the others weve looked at so far, so instead well focus on rhyme scheme. Rhyme scheme is the pattern formed by the rhyming words at the end of the lines of a poem. In this poem, the first four lines end with the words me, blow, me, and go. Me and me rhyme, and blow and go rhyme. The first rhyming pair is given the designation A, and the second rhyming pair is given the designation B. Therefore, we say that first stanza is ABAB. In the second stanza, bending and descending are new rhymes, but snow and go match with the 2nd and 4th lines from the first stanza. The second stanzas rhyme scheme is CBCB, and the third stanza goes back to ABAB.
Your Turn
Write your own description of Emily Brontes English moors. This may require some research, so read, look at pictures, maybe even watch a video of Wuthering Heights (Brontes most famous novel has been made into quite a few movies). In your description, choose just the right words to set the dark, dismal, dreary mood that Bronte creates in this poem. Remember, good descriptions use your five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, smell) plus how you feel (emotion, not touch). Bonus points if you throw in three or four good examples of alliteration.
Questions
Pick one of the questions to answer as completely as you can.
1. Who is this person out on the moors? Some people say the poem is about a woman bound by some spell to be stuck there. Others say it is indeed a woman that is bound by a spell, but shes stuck watching her small child alone out in the moors as the storm brews. In your mind, who is out there? What has bound them to this scene? 2. What does that one little word choice in the last line do for the meaning of the poem? How can one word mean so much? 3. How does the setting of the poem add to the mood? How does Bronte create the setting in the poem?