Winter And The Brontë Sisters

The holly tree has long been synonymous with winter and with Christmas, as the beautiful carol ‘The Holly And The Ivy’ shows. This is an old hymn and its associations are older, for holly has been revered since pagan times. It is a symbol of rebirth, for in the depths of winter it is said that the Holly King reigns over the world, to be replaced by the Oak King when new roots and new life appear.

 Emily loved the Holly king’s reign, and winter was always a magical time for her. For Emily Brontë, holly also symbolised the importance of friendship, and its pre-eminence over everything else. We see this in her poem ‘Love And Friendship’, also dating from 1844, and obviously written with the love of her life in mind, her closest friends and confidante, Anne Brontë. It is a sweet poem for this sweetest of seasons – so I leave you with it now, and with Emily’s winter blessing – may your garlands always be green!

Love and Friendship

By Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar,

Friendship like the holly-tree—

The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms

But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,

Its summer blossoms scent the air;

Yet wait till winter comes again

And who will call the wild-briar fair? 

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now

And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,

That when December blights thy brow

He still may leave thy garland green. 

Read more : annebronte

The Crow Hill bog burst.

On 2 September 1824, the bog on Crow Hill above Haworth suddenly burst, leading to a landslide and severe flooding. Branwell, Emily & Anne Brontë, caught in the deluge while walking on the moors, were forced to shelter in a farmhouse porch. Find out more from  Principal Curator, Ann Dinsdale

Emily was inspired by the event.

..............

High Waving Heather

High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending,

Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;

Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,

Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,

Man's spirit away from its drear dongeon sending,

Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forest lending

One mighty voice to the life-giving wind;

Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,

Fast through the valleys a reckless course wending,

Wider and deeper their waters extending,

Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying,

Changing for ever from midnight to noon;

Roaring like thunder, like soft music sighing,

Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,

Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,

Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

The Brontë Sisters in Auckland Discover Auckland Libraries rare heritage items.

Auckland is a long way from the wild moors of Yorkshire where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë lived and wrote, but their first published work is part of the Heritage Collections at Auckland Libraries.

Currently, on display at Tāmaki Pātaka Kōrero - Central City Library is an extremely rare copy of the only collaborative work by the Brontë sisters – Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily and Anne respectively).

A collection of poems by all three sisters; the book was their first published work, released in 1846 before the production of the renowned novels that they’re remembered for today.

Only one thousand copies of Poems were printed, and as the Brontë sisters' fame grew, the rare books became highly valuable and sought-after items.

The copy now sitting in our Auckland library once belonged to Auckland lawyer and art patron Edmond Mackechnie, and was donated to Auckland Libraries by his widow in November 1902. It sits alongside Shirley, Charlotte’s second novel published in 1849.

Jane Wild, Manager of Auckland Libraries’ Heritage Collections is excited by the books on display. “Poems is a compelling example of the scope and value of our heritage collections,” she says.

Read all: aucklandcouncil.govt.nz

Will the Day Be Bright or Cloudy?

Will the day be bright or cloudy?

Sweetly has its dawn begun

But the heaven may shake with thunder

Ere the setting of the sun

Lady watch Apollo’s journey

Thus thy first born’s course shall be –

If his beams through summer vapours

Warm the earth all placidly

Her days shall pass like a pleasant dream in sweet tranquillity

If it darken if a shadow

Quench his rays and summon rain

Flowers may open buds may blossom

Bud and flower alike are vain

Her days shall pass like a mournful story in care and tears and pain.

If the wind be fresh and free

The wide skies clear and cloudless blue

The woods and fields and golden flowers

Sparkling in sunshine and in dew

Her days shall pass in Glory’s light the world’s drear desert through

Note: There seem to be a number of slightly different versions of this and many of Emily Brontë’s poems, with different line breaks, for example. I’m working from the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets edition, in which the punctuation seems more minimal than in other editions. I did conduct some research but can’t ascertain which is truest to Brontë’s originals.

Read more: This is jess writes/will-the-day-be-bright-or-cloudy 

On 8th October, the United Kingdom celebrates National Poetry Day.The beautifully mournful poetry of Anne Bronte.

 

 

When away from the influence of Emily, for example when at Roe Head school in Mirfield or as governess to the Ingham or Robinson families, Anne wrote poetry that was much more personal to her. Occasionally she wrote poetry that was ostensibly said by Gondal characters, but which really spoke of her own feelings, as in the beautiful yearning of ‘Home’:

 

“How brightly glistening in the sun
The woodland ivy plays!
While yonder beeches from their barks
Reflect his silver rays.
That sun surveys a lovely scene
From softly smiling skies;
And wildly through unnumbered trees
The wind of winter sighs:
Now loud, it thunders o’er my head,
And now in distance dies.
But give me back my barren hills
Where colder breezes rise;
Where scarce the scattered, stunted trees
Can yield an answering swell,
But where a wilderness of heath
Returns the sound as well.
For yonder garden, fair and wide,
With groves of evergreen,
Long winding walks, and borders trim,
And velvet lawns between;
Restore to me that little spot,
With grey walls compassed round,
Where knotted grass neglected lies,
And weeds usurp the ground.
Though all around this mansion high
Invites the foot to roam,
And though its halls are fair within –
Oh, give me back my HOME!”

 

Nick Holland

On #NationalPoetryDay read my blog about the beautifully mournful poetry of Anne #Bronte http://wp.me/p6M2Lg-4j

Emory names Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library for alumnus Stuart Rose

A rare copy of “Poems" (1848) by the Bronte Sisters writing as "Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," part of the Stuart Rose collection at the newly named Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University.

Emory University's Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) has been named in honor of university alumnus and literary benefactor Stuart A. Rose of Dayton, Ohio. Read all: emory_rose_library

‘I’ll walk where my own nature will be leading’

 

Poem Emily Bronte

 

Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians

Discover 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures, new insights by 60 experts, 25 documentary films, 30 inspirational teachers’ notes and more. Discovering Literature has been supported since its inception by Dr Naim Dangoor CBE, The Exilarch's Foundation

From: .bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians
So when thinking about Wuthering Heights, we should not see it as a novel that simply depicts or belongs to the moors. The final stanza of one of the Brontës’ most celebrated poems (we do not know if it was written Emily or Charlotte) begins ‘I’ll walk where my own nature will be leading’. It is concerned with both an essential human ‘nature’ and an absolute freedom that goes beyond any particular place or time. The speaker’s deep sense of embodiedness and place is seamed with the hope of radical freedom. At the very end of Wuthering Heights, a little shepherd boy who is ‘crying terribly’ tells Nelly that he has seen the dead Heathcliff and Cathy ‘walk’ on the moors (ch. 34). It confirms how they remain simultaneously deeply identified with the landscape and sinister and alien presences within it. Their own deep sense of belonging to the moors is a source of terror and estrangement for others. Belonging is the way not to belong. - See more at: http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/walking-the-landscape-of-wuthering-heights#sthash.vImHr8hH.dpuf

The Visionary

SILENT is the house: all are laid asleep:

One alone looks out o'er the snow-wreaths deep,

Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze

That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees.

Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor;

Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door;

The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far:

I trim it well, to be the wanderer's guiding-star.

Frown, my haughty sire! chide, my angry dame!

Set your slaves to spy; threaten me with shame:

But neither sire nor dame, nor prying serf shall know,

What angel nightly tracks that waste of frozen snow.

What I love shall come like visitant of air,

Safe in secret power from lurking human snare;

What loves me, no word of mine shall e'er betray,

Though for faith unstained my life must forfeit pay

Burn, then, little lamp; glimmer straight and clear--

Hush! a rustling wing stirs, methinks, the air:

He for whom I wait, thus ever comes to me;

Strange Power! I trust thy might; trust thou my constancy.

Emily Bronte

Love and Friendship

By Emily Brontë 1818–1848

Love is like the wild rose-briar,

Friendship like the holly-tree—

The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms

But which will bloom most constantly?

 

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,

Its summer blossoms scent the air;

Yet wait till winter comes again

And who will call the wild-briar fair?

 

Then scorn the silly rose-wreath now

And deck thee with the holly’s sheen,

That when December blights thy brow

He still may leave thy garland green.

Fall, Leaves, Fall by Emily Bronte

 Bronte Society e-newsletter

 

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night’s decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Newspapers and poems

During the 1840s Branwell Bronte saw the printing of about nineteen poems in local publications, including the Halifax Guardian, the Yorkshire Gazette, and the Leeds Intelligencer, most signed under the pseudonym “Northangerland.”
-----------
Yorkshire Gazette: newspaper edited by James Lancelot Foster, in which Branwell published five poems in 1845. Only two of these (“The Emigrant” I & II) were recent compositions. blackwellreference

THE EMIGRANT.

'When sink from sight the landmarks of our home,

And,—all the bitterness of farewells o'er,—

We yield our spirit unto ocean's foam,

And in the new-born life which lies before,

On far Columbian or Australian shore,

Strive to exchange time past for time to come:

How melancholy, then, if morn restore—

(Less welcome than the night's forgetful gloom)

Old England's blue hills to our sight again,

When we, our thoughts seemed weaning from her sky,—

That pang which wakes the almost silenced pain!

Thus, when the sick man lies, resigned to die,

A well-loved voice, a well-remembered strain,

Lets Time break harshly in upon Eternity.

When, after his long day, consumed in toil,

'Neath the scarce welcome shade of unknown trees,

Upturning thanklessly a foreign soil,

The lonely exile seeks his evening ease,—

'Tis not those tropic woods his spirit sees;

Nor calms, to him, that heaven, this world's turmoil;

Nor cools his burning brow that spicy breeze.

Ah no! the gusty clouds of England's isle

Bring music wafted on their stormy wind,

And on its verdant meads, night's shadows lower,

While "Auld Lang Syne" the darkness calls to mind.

Thus, when the demon Thirst, beneath his power

The wanderer bows,—to feverish sleep consigned,

He hears the rushing rill, and feels the cooling shower.'

gutenberg

-------

Leyland was himself a poet, as I have said, and a literary critic of ability and judgment. Branwell submitted some poems to him for opinion, and he advised his friend to publish them with his name appended, rather than under the pseudonym of 'Northangerland,' for he considered them creditable to his genius. But Branwell, on July 12th, 1842, writing to Leyland, asking some technical questions, says, in a postscript, 'Northangerland has so long wrought on in secret and silence that he dare not take your kind encouragement in the light which vanity would prompt him to do.' .' brontefamily

Leeds Intelligencer: the “most excellent Tory newspaper” (CB, “History of the Year,” EW, v. 1, p. 4) which the Brontës read as children, and which Patrick still had read to him at the end of his life (Wemyss Reid, 1877, ch. 12). It was edited for a time (1822–5) by the poet Alaric Watts, but the driving force behind it was the proprietor John Hernaman. It published many letters from Patrick, including those on the Crow Hill bog eruption, and others on the reform of the criminal code, Catholic Emancipation, and the new Poor Law. Branwell probably got his job with Mr Postlethwaite through its advertisement pages, and it published (lifting it from Fraser’s ) Anne’s poem “The Narrow Way.” It praised Jane Eyre ’s “faculty of psychological analysis” and its “force and originality.” The editors conducted a weekly sparring match with the Leeds Mercury not unlike that between the Eatanswill Independent and Gazette in Pickwick Papers
gutenberg.org/files/Leyland/ Branwell Bronte
library.leeds
oxfordreference.=Branwell
 

Photographs on Pennistone and the Bluebell

hathawaysofhaworth had a photograph taking day yesterday

 and  took several photographs on Pennistone.

 

From this weblog: The past image is of  the gown with a correct shaped collar which I made myself out of vintage Victorian lace as early collars from the 1830s are too expensive for everyday work wear so I thought I would share the shots of the collar these are taken at  the St Ives estate nr Bingley, the bluebells are just starting to come out there so its a nice trio if your staying in Haworth as it’s not far from Haworth.

 

 

The Bluebell

The Bluebell is the sweetest flower
That waves in summer air:
Its blossoms have the mightiest power
To soothe my spirit's care.

Emily Bronte
literature/bronte

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.

Anne Bronte
The_Bluebell-by-Anne_Bronte

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT POEM from Charlotte bronte

Today's the day when Charlotte Brontë's manuscript poem is going under the hammer at Bonhams. La Stampa (Italy) features the poem.

AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT POEM WRITTEN IN HER MINUSCULE HAND SIGNED 'C. BRONTE', dated by her 14 December 1829 and with the autograph note 'from the Young Mans Intelligencer', on a small slip of paper (c. 3 x 3 inches, formerly part of the address leaf of a letter - on the verso survive 'Miss Br' and 'Rev' with a hand-inscribed postal rate), [Haworth Rectory], 14 December 1829

 

 

 

I've been wandering in the greenwoods
And mid flowery smiling plains
I've been listening to the dark floods
To the thrushes thrilling strains

I have gathered the pale primrose
And the purple violet sweet
I've been where the Asphodel grows
And where lives the red deer fleet.

I've been to the distant mountain,
To the silver singing rill
By the crystal murmering mountain,
And the shady verdant hill.

I've been where the poplar is springing
From the fair Inamelled ground
Where the nightingale is singing
With a solemn plaintive sound.

 

Juliet Barker explains that it was probably the expense and shortage of supply of paper that led to the tiny writing adopted by the Brontë children -- 'they developed a minuscule hand, designed to look like bookprint, which allowed them to write many more words to the page. The writing cannot be read without a magnifying glass but as all the young Brontës were shortsighted, this would not have been so much of a problem to them. The tiny hand also had the advantage of being illegible to their father and aunt, so the children enjoyed the delicious thrill knowing that the contents of their little books were a secret shared only among themselves.' The present manuscript is written on the recto of an address leaf addressed to Miss Br[ontë].

This poem is one of her earliest (which date from July to December 1829). In all she wrote about 200 and in 1836, when she wrote to Southey asking for his opinion of her talents, she told him that she wished 'to be for ever known' as a poetess. Southey infamously told her she possessed 'in no inconsiderable degree...the faculty of verse... But it is not with a view to distinction that you should cultivate this talent, if you consult your own happiness.'

 

A tiny poem is about to come to the market

A tiny poem, in Charlotte's distinctive minuscule handwriting, is about to come to the market on April 10 at Bonham's, London. Estimated to sell at between £40,000 - £45,000, it is a very early example of one of Charlotte's poems, dated 14 December 1829, and has, attached, the autograph note: 'from the Young Mans Intelligencer' (ie an edition of the the newspaper created by the Brontes for their toy soldiers). facebookpages/Bronte-Parsonage-Museum

Bear in mind when you read this, that Charlotte was just 13!
 

 I've been wandering in the greenwoods

And mid flowery smiling plains

I've been listening to the dark floods

To the thrushes thrilling strains

I have gathered the pale primrose

And the purple violet sweet

I've been where the Asphodel grows

And where lives the red deer fleet.

I've been to the distant mountain,

To the silver singing rill

By the crystal murmering mountain,

And the shady verdant hill.

I've been where the poplar is springing

From the fair inamelled ground

Where the nightingale is singing

With a solemn plaintive sound.

Bonhams

More information on: bronteblog./-charlotte-poem-to-be-auctioned.html

 

On this day in 1846 Emily Bronte wrote the poem, "No coward soul is mine No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere...".

 

On this day in 1841 Charlotte Bronte wrote her poem "Passion".

PASSION

by: Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855)

OME have won a wild delight,
By daring wilder sorrow;
Could I gain thy love to-night,
I'd hazard death to-morrow.

Could the battle-struggle earn
One kind glance from thine eye,
How this withering heart would burn,
The heady fight to try!

Welcome nights of broken sleep,
And days of carnage cold,
Could I deem that thou wouldst weep
To hear my perils told.

Tell me, if with wandering bands
I roam full far away,
Wilt thou to those distant lands
In spirit ever stray?

Wild, long, a trumpet sounds afar;
Bid me--bid me go
Where Seik and Briton meet in war,
On Indian Sutlej's flow.

Blood has dyed the Sutlej's waves
With scarlet stain, I know;
Indus' borders yawn with graves,
Yet, command me go!

Though rank and high the holocaust
Of nations steams to heaven,
Glad I'd join the death-doomed host,
Were but the mandate given.

Passion's strength should nerve my arm,
Its ardour stir my life,
Till human force to that dread charm
Should yield and sink in wild alarm,
Like trees to tempest-strife.

If, hot from war, I seek thy love,
Darest thou turn aside?
Darest thou then my fire reprove,
By scorn, and maddening pride?

No--my will shall yet control
Thy will, so high and free,
And love shall tame that haughty soul--
Yes--tenderest love for me.

I'll read my triumph in thine eyes,
Behold, and prove the change;
Then leave, perchance, my noble prize,
Once more in arms to range.

I'd die when all the foam is up,
The bright wine sparkling high;
Nor wait till in the exhausted cup
Life's dull dregs only lie.

Then Love thus crowned with sweet reward,
Hope blest with fulness large,
I'd mount the saddle, draw the sword,
And perish in the charge!

"Passion" is reprinted from Poems By Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Charlotte, nne, and Emily Bronte. Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1848.

MORE POEMS BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE

Poem Emily Bronte

Alone I sat; the summer day
Had died in smiling light away;
I saw it die, I watched it fade
From the misty hill and breezeless glade.

And thoughts in my soul were rushing,
And my heart bowed beneath their power;
And tears within my eyes were gushing
Because I could not speak the feeling,
The solemn joy around me stealing,
In that divine, untroubled hour.

I asked myself, O why has Heaven
Denied the precious gift to me,
The glorious gift to many given,
To speak their thoughts in poetry?

Dreams have encircled me, I said,
From careless childhood's sunny time;
Visions by ardent fancy fed
Since life was in its morning prime.

But now, when I had hoped to sing,
My fingers strike a tuneless string;
And still the burden of the strain—
I strive no more, 'tis all in vain.
· · · · ·
August 1837.

" This bringing out of our little book was hard work. As was to be expected neither we nor our poems were at all wanted ; but for this we had been prepared at the outset ; though inexperienced ourselves, we had read the experience of others. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom we applied. Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, I ventured to apply to the Messrs. Chambers of Edinburgh for a word of advice : they may have forgotten the circumstance, but / have not ; for from them I received a brief and business-like but civil and sensible reply, on which we acted, and at last made a way." *

emilybronte

We had very early cherished the dream of one day becoming authors.

This dream, never relinquished even when distance divided and absorbing tasks occupied us, now suddenly acquired strength and consistency: it took the character of a resolve. We agreed to arrange a small selection of our poems, and, if possible, to get them printed. Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because -- without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called "feminine" -- we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward, a flattery, which is not true praise.

The bringing out of our little book was hard work. As was to be expected, neither we nor our poems were at all wanted; but for this we had been prepared at the outset; though inexperienced ourselves, we had read the experience of others. The great puzzle lay in the difficulty of getting answers of any kind from the publishers to whom we applied. Being greatly harassed by this obstacle, I ventured to apply to the Messrs. Chambers, of Edinburgh, for a word of advice; THEY may have forgotten the circumstance, but I have not, for from them I received a brief and business-like, but civil and sensible reply, on which we acted, and at last made a way.

The book was printed: it is scarcely known, and all of it that merits to be known are the poems of Ellis Bell. The fixed conviction I held, and hold, of the worth of these poems has not indeed received the confirmation of much favourable criticism; but I must retain it notwithstanding.

Ill-success failed to crush us: the mere effort to succeed had given a wonderful zest to existence; it must be pursued. We each set to work on a prose tale: Ellis Bell produced "Wuthering Heights," Acton Bell "Agnes Grey," and Currer Bell also wrote a narrative in one volume. These MSS. were perseveringly obtruded upon various publishers for the space of a year and a half; usually, their fate was an ignominious and abrupt dismissal.

At last "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey" were accepted on terms somewhat impoverishing to the two authors; Currer Bell's book found acceptance nowhere, nor any acknowledgment of merit, so that something like the chill of despair began to invade her heart. As a forlorn hope, she tried one publishing house more -- Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. Ere long, in a much shorter space than that on which experience had taught her to calculate -- there came a letter, which she opened in the dreary expectation of finding two hard, hopeless lines, intimating that Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. "were not disposed to publish the MS.," and, instead, she took out of the envelope a letter of two pages. She read it trembling. It declined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, but it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, so considerately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added, that a work in three volumes would meet with careful attention.

I was then just completing "Jane Eyre," at which I had been working while the one-volume tale was plodding its weary round in London: in three weeks I sent it off; friendly and skilful hands took it in. This was in the commencement of September, 1847; it came out before the close of October following, while "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey," my sisters' works, which had already been in the press for months, still lingered under a different management. 
womens history/brontes

Gondal and Poems

Poems by Currer, Ellis and Action Bell, published in 1846 and paid for by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, contained twenty-one poems by Emily and by Anne and nineteen by Charlotte. Despite the fact that it received two encouraging reviews, only two copies were sold. Charlotte edited Emily's poems and rewrote some for the 1850 edition of her sisters' poems and novels. She included seventeen previously unpublished poems from Emily's manuscripts and one poem not found in Emily's manuscript ("Often rebuked, yet always back returning"). Nothing of the Gondal history remains except Emily's poems, the references in the journal fragments by Anne and Emily, the birthday papers of 1841 and 1845, and Anne's list of the names of characters and locations.

• Emily Brontë has been called one of the great English lyric poets and has found admirers among other poets. Emily Dickinson thought so highly of Emily Brontë's poetry that she chose "No coward soul" to be read at her funeral.
• To Imagination (September 3, 1844). Emily personifies Imagination as a physical presence separate from the individual in several poems, including this one.
• The Two Children (May 28, 1845). Emily's name for these two poems in the Gondal saga was "A. E. and R. C"; it was Charlotte who gave them this title. The image of two children appears a number of times in Emily Brontë's poetry as well as in her novel. In this poem, the "melancholy boy" resembles Heathcliff and Hareton, while the "Child of Delight! with sunbright hair" resembles Catherine Earnshaw and Cathy Linton; the poem hints that they are to redeem the "melancholy boy." The dark-light, male-female pair appears in the novel and in the Gondal saga as well.
• How beautiful the Earth is still ( June 2, 1845). Charlotte Brontë wrote "Never was better stuff penned." in the manuscript of this poem.
• The Prisoner. A Fragment (October 9, 1845) This poem is part of a larger Gondal poem which Emily revised for publication in 1846. She cut lines 1-12, 45-64, and 93-152. She added the concluding stanza, which starts with "She ceased to speak..." The original title of the poem is "Julian M. and A.G. Rochelle," the names of two lovers in the Gondal saga.
• The Visionary (October 9, 1845). This poem is part of the same Gondal poem from which Emily carved "The Prisoner. A Fragment." Charlotte Brontë took lines 1-12 of Emily's original poem, "Julian M. and A.G Rochelle," and added 8 lines of her own. Thus, the positive ending in which the watcher has a spiritual experience is Charlotte's and the watcher may be seen as Emily rather than a Gondal character. In Charlotte's version, it is hard to explain the guiding light in the window of stanze 2.
• Often rebuked, yet always back returning. Harold Bloom calls this Emily Brontë's finest poem; however, C.W. Hatfield, who edited her poems, speculates that Charlotte wrote or revised this poem. It first appeared in the 1850 edition of Emily's novel and poems; no manuscript version of this poem is known. academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/
• Anne's poems are generally divided into two categories: the 'Gondal', and the 'non-Gondal'. The former are the ones that she wrote as part of the fantasy world - Gondal - which she created and developed throughout her childhood and youth with Emily: most of these where written while Anne was in close proximity with her sister. When the two sisters were parted, Anne rarely ever wrote Gondal verses. mick-armitage.staff.shef.ac.uk/anne/poems
• Most of the poems quoted come from the manuscript note-book in the British Museum.  The manuscript of the “Alcona” poem is in the Bonnell Collection at the Parsonage Museum. ingentaconnect
• wiki/Poems_by_Currer,_Ellis,_and_Acton_Bell