J. C. Squire, ed. A Book of Women’s Verse. 1921.
By Charlotte Brontë (18161855)Evening Solace
T
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart’s best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe,
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.
Float softly back—a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others’ sufferings seem,
Oh! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie!
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress—
Only a deeper impulse given,
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven
Seeking a life and world to come.