Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/192

136 XXXI

night was dark, yet winter breathed

With softened sighs on Gondal's shore;

And though its wind repining grieved,

It chained the snow-swollen streams no more.

How deep into the wilderness

My horse had strayed, I cannot say;

But neither morsel nor caress

Would urge him farther on the way.

So loosening from his neck the rein,

I set my worn companion free,

And billowy hill and boundless plain

Full soon divided him from me.

The sullen clouds lay all unbroken

And blackening round the horizon drear,

But still they gave no certain token

Of heavy rain or tempest near.

I paused, confounded and distracted,

Down in the heath my limbs I threw;

But wilder as I longed for rest,

More wakeful heart and eyelids grew.

It was about the middle night

And under such a starless dome,

When gliding from the mountains height,

I saw a shadowy spirit come.