"The Night-Wind" by Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte was born on July 30, 1818. Northern England. She was one of 4 children to survive to childhood. Her two sisters, Anne and Charlotte, are now well known poets and novelists just like Emily. Emily lived only until age thirty when she died from tuberculosis three months after her brother. She wrote only one novel in her lifetime, Wuthering Height, which is considered a classic in English Literature. She also wrote several poems under the pseudonyms Ellis Bell.

In summer's mellow midnight,

A cloudless moon shone through

Our open parlour window,

And rose-trees wet with dew.

I sat in silent musing;

The soft wind waved my hair;

It told me heaven was glorious,

And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing

To bring such thoughts to me;

But still it whispered lowly,

How dark the woods will be!

"The thick leaves in my murmur

Are rustling like a dream,

And all their myriad voices

Instinct with spirit seem."

I said, "Go, gentle singer,

Thy wooing voice is kind:

But do not think its music

Has power to reach my mind.

"Play with the scented flower,

The young tree's supple bough,

And leave my human feelings

In their own course to flow."

The wanderer would not heed me;

Its kiss grew warmer still.

"O come!" it sighed so sweetly;

"I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.

"Were we not friends from childhood?

Have I not loved thee long?

As long as thou, the solemn night,

Whose silence wakes my song.

"And when thy heart is resting

Beneath the church-aisle stone,

I shall have time for mourning,

And thou for being alone."

The two characters in this poem are the person and the wind. Because of the way the person describes the spatial setting such in a gentle way, one can assume it is a woman. This spatial setting is in a parlor near a forest. The temporal setting does not specify the year in which the poem is taking place, but what is given is the time of year. It is nighttime on a calm and peaceful summer day without a cloud in the sky. The moon is lighting the sky as a faint breeze caresses the woman. This breeze tempts the woman to come out into the dark forest, to get lost in the wilderness and in nature. The wind then can be seen as an extended metaphor for the woman’s imagination that is trying to dominate her thoughts. The situation, therefore, is the woman resisting the wind, or her imagination, consuming her mind. She is trying to keep her mind from going off on a tangent and daydreaming the night away. When taking into consideration the historical context, this fear of having unique, individualized thoughts as a woman becomes more understandable. In the 1840s when Bronte wrote this piece, women had significantly less of a role in society than today, so a different lens must be looked through to derive the meaning of the poem, a lens where women were raised to be less independent. This is why she resists the wind, her imagination, even when it was so tempting to her.