CHAPTER VI.
'REAL REST.'—'PENMAENMAWR.'
'Real Rest'—Comments—Spirit of Branwell and Emily Identical—Letter to Leyland—Branwell Broods on his Sorrows—'Penmaenmawr'—Comments —He still Searches and Hopes for Employment—Charlotte's somewhat Overdrawn Expressions—The Alleged Elopement Proposal—Probable Origin of the Story.
Though Branwell Brontë was so feeble in health that, despite his wishes, he found physical labour impossible, and though the reaction from utter despair—through whose impetus he completed one volume of his novel—had been followed by a condition which led him to think worthy literary work beyond his power, we find him, almost at the same time, writing two of the finest poems which remain from his hand. It has been seen, in the letter addressed to Mr. Grundy, how he declares that, owing to the state of his mind, he is unable to undertake any literary work worth reading. But we have certain knowledge of an immediate movement of his genius, and that it found expression in verse, which gave a free course to his feelings. In the following poem we have perhaps the most powerful and weird expression of inconsolable sorrow ever penned. A strange calm had now succeeded the storms of feeling its author had passed through.
REAL REST.
'I see a corpse upon the waters lie,
With eyes turned, swelled and sightless, to the sky,
And arms outstretched to move, as wave on wave
Upbears it in its boundless billowy grave.
Not time, but ocean, thins its flowing hair;