Page:The complete poems of Emily Bronte.djvu/232

176 Never put back that golden flow

Of curls; and kiss that pearly brow,

And feel no other earthly bliss

Was equal to that parent's kiss?

No; turn towards the western side.

There stands Sidonia's deity!

In all her glory, all her pride!

And truly like a god she seems,

Some lad of wild enthusiast's dream.

And this is she for whom he died!

For whom his spirit unforgiven

Wanders unsheltered, shut from heaven,

An outcast for eternity.

Those eyes are dust, those lips are clay,

That form is mouldered all away;

Nor thought, nor sense, nor pulse, nor breath;

The whole devoured and lost in death!

There is no worm however mean,

That living, is not nobler now

Than she—Lord Alfred's idol queen,

So loved—so worshipped long ago.

O come away! The Norman door

Is silenced with a sudden shine;

Come, leave these dreams o'er things of yore,

And turn to Nature's face divine.