Branwell Brontë

Lydia Gisborne

On Ouse's grassy banks - last Whitsuntide,
I sat, with fears and pleasures, in my soul
Commingled, as 'it roamed without control,'
O'er present hours and through a future wide
Where love, me thought, should keep, my heart beside
Her, whose own prison home I looked upon:
But, as I looked, descended summer's sun,
And did not its descent my hopes deride?
The sky though blue was soon to change to grey -
I, on that day, next year must own no smile -
And as those waves, to Humber far away,
Were gliding - so, though that hour might beguile
My Hopes, they too, to woe's far deeper sea,
Rolled past the shores of Joy's now dim and distant isle.