Soul—where kindred kindness
No early promise woke,
Barren is thy beauty,
As weed upon a rock.
Wither—soul and blossom!
You both were vainly given:
Earth reserves no blessing
For the unblest of Heaven.
The doomed child of the outcast mother is the doomed man, and, by the doom, himself an outcast. The other child, the "Child of delight, with sun-bright hair", has vowed herself to be his guardian angel. Their drama is obscure; but you make out that it is the doomed child, and not Branwell Brontë, who is "The Wanderer from the Fold".
How few, of all the hearts that loved,
Are grieving for thee now;
And why should mine to-night be moved
With such a sense of woe?
Too often thus, when left alone,
Where none my thoughts can see,
Comes back a word, a passing tone
From thy strange history.
* * * * *
An anxious gazer from the shore—
I marked the whitening wave,
And wept above thy fate the more
Because—I could not save.
It recks not now, when all is over;
But yet my heart will be
A mourner still, though friend and lover
Have both forgotten thee.
Compare with this that stern elegy in Mr. Shorter's collection, "Shed no tears o'er that tomb." A recent critic has referred this poem of reprobation also to Branwell Brontë—as if Emily could possibly have written like this of Branwell:
Shed no tears o'er that tomb,
For there are angels weeping;
Mourn not him whose doom
Heaven itself is mourning.