Haworth Churchyard

By Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)

In memory of Charlotte Brontë. Died March 31, 1855.

HOW shall we honour the young,

The ardent, the gifted? how mourn?

Console we cannot; her ear

Is deaf. Far northward from here,

In a churchyard high mid the moors

Of Yorkshire, a little earth

Stops it for ever to praise.

Where, behind Keighly, the road

Up to the heart of the moors

Beneath heath-clad showery hills

Runs, and colliers carts

Poach the deep ways coming down,

And a rough, grim’d race have their homes—

There, on its slope, is built

The moorland town. But the church

Stands on the crest of the hill,

Lonely and bleak; at its side

The parsonage house and the graves.

See! in the desolate house

The children’s father. Alas—

Age, whom the most of us chide,

Chide, and put back, and delay—

Come, unupbraided for once!

Lay thy benumbing hand,

Gratefully cold on this brow!

Shut out the grief, the despair!

Weaken the sense of his loss!

Deaden the infinite pain!

Another grief I see,

Younger: but this the Muse,

In pity, with silent awe

Revering what she cannot sooth,

With veil’d face and bow’d head,

Salutes, and passes by.

Strew with roses the grave

Of the early-dying. Alas!

Early she goes on the path

To the Silent Country, and leaves

Half his laurels unwon,

Dying too soon; yet green

Laurels she had, and a course

Short, yet redoubled by Fame.