Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/87

Rh It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,

Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there!

The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;

"I have been struck," she said, "and I am suffering now;

Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong,

And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long."

Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: "Shall I be won to hear;

Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?

Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans?

Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.

"My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,

But hard as hardest flint, the soul that lurks behind;

And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see

Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me."

About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn,

"My friend," she gently said, "you have not heard me mourn;