Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/28

18 In that endowed and youthful frame;

Shrined in her heart and hid from day,

They burned unseen with silent flame;

In youth's first search for mental light,

She lived but to reflect and learn,

But soon her mind's maturer might

For stronger task did pant and yearn;

And stronger task did fate assign,

Task that a giant's strength might strain;

To suffer long and ne'er repine,

Be calm in frenzy, smile at pain.

Pale with the secret war of feeling,

Sustained with courage, mute, yet high;

The wounds at which she bled, revealing

Only by altered cheek and eye;

She bore in silence—but when passion

Surged in her soul with ceaseless foam,

The storm at last brought desolation,

And drove her exiled from her home.

And silent still, she straight assembled

The wrecks of strength her soul retained;

For though the wasted body trembled,

The unconquered mind, to quail, disdained.

She crossed the sea—now lone she wanders

By Seine's, or Rhine's, or Arno's flow;