Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/59

Rh "Unloved—I love; unwept—I weep;

Grief I restrain—hope I repress:

Vain is this anguish—fixed and deep;

Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss.

My love awakes no love again,

My tears collect, and fall unfelt;

My sorrow touches none with pain,

My humble hopes to nothing melt.

For me the universe is dumb,

Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind;

Life I must bound, existence sum

In the strait limits of one mind;

That mind my own. Oh! narrow cell;

Dark—imageless—a living tomb!

There must I sleep, there wake and dwell

Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom."

Again she paused; a moan of pain,

A stifled sob, alone was heard;

Long silence followed—then again,

Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred.

"Must it be so? Is this my fate?

Can I nor struggle, nor contend?

And am I doomed for years to wait,

Watching death's lingering axe descend?