“The Night-Wind” by Emily Bronte

        Emily Jane Bronte was born on July 30, 1818, in England.  She died at the young age of 30. Emily felt that her health was compromised by the harsh local climate and unsanitary conditions at home.  She caught a severe cold at the funeral of her brother, which was said to have led to tuberculosis.  She initially refused to be treated.  By the time she agreed to see a physician, it was too late for her. Ms. Bronte was a poet, novelist, and a governess.  She is best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights.  She wrote under the pen name of Ellis Bell. 

In summer's mellow midnight,

A cloudless moon shone through

 Our open parlour window

 And rosetrees wet with dew.

 

 I sat in silent musing,

 The soft wind waved my hair;

 It told me Heaven was glorious

 And sleeping Earth was fair.

 

 I needed not its breathing

 To bring such thoughts to me,

 But still it whispered lowly,

 "How dark the woods will be!

 

 "The thick leaves in my murmur

 Are rustling like a dream,

 And all their myriad voices

 Instinct with spirit seem."

 

 I said "Go, gentle singer

 Thy wooing voice is kind

 But do not think its music

 Has power to reach my mind.

 

 "Play with the scented flower,

 The young tree's supple bough,

 And leave my human feelings

 In their own course to flow."

 

 The Wanderer would not leave me;

 Its kiss grew warmer still -

 "O come", it sighed so sweetly,

 "I'll win thee 'gainst thy will."

 

 "Have we not been from childhood friends?

 Have I not loved thee long?

 As long as though hast loved the night

 Whose silence wakes my song.

 

 "And when thy heart is laid at rest

 Beneath the church-yard stone

 I shall have time enough to mourn

 And thou to be alone."

         The setting for this captivating poem by Emily Bronte is on a cloudless summer night as the speaker sits mesmerized by the enchanting view that is visible through her open parlour window. There is a slight wind lightly blowing as the poem describes, “The thick leaves in my murmur are rustling like a dream…” suggestive of wind gently stirring the leaves on the trees.  The speaker appears to be a female by the tone of the poem and such wording as “The soft wind waved my hair…”  The first line of the poem reveals the temporal setting (time) -- “In summer’s mellow midnight…” The exact location as far as city or state or country is not disclosed.  This seems to more easily allow the readers to put themselves in the speaker’s shoes, to sense what she is experiencing on this summer evening.

This poem initially was comforting and seemed to almost lure the readers into a dreamlike, mystical state with its gentle words and the beautiful, soft pictures that it painted in one’s mind.  However, the poem subsequently took on a rather dark, sinister feeling as the night and its inhabitants (including the wind and the dark woods) seemed to be trying to seduce the speaker and to lure her into the blackness and what may lie beyond.   The speaker’s imagination gets carried away with the bewitching night.  Perhaps she is lonely and a bit depressed, and her inner fears surface on this dark night.  It’s such a situation where one hears and sees things that aren’t truly there, and reality and fantasy become confused.  The speaker fights back against these images in her mind and to pull herself out of this dark place.

            Personification plays a part in this poem as the wind speaks and seduces.   There are four-line stanzas with the second and fourth line rhyming.  The words are very descriptive.  The poem has a nice flow and is very effective at inviting the readers to experience the situation with the speaker.