Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WANDERER FROM THE FOLD, by EMILY JANE BRONTE



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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE WANDERER FROM THE FOLD, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: How few, of all the hearts that loved
Last Line: Have both forgotten thee!
Alternate Author Name(s): Bell, Ellis
Variant Title(s): E.w. To A.g.a.
Subject(s): Absence; Separation; Isolation


How few, of all the hearts that loved,
Are grieving for thee now!
And why should mine, tonight, 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.

Sometimes I seem to see thee rise
A glorious child again --
All virtues beaming from thine eyes
That ever honoured men --

Courage and Truth, a generous breast
Where Love and Gladness lay;
A being whose very Memory blest
And made the mourner gay --

O, fairly spread thy early sail
And fresh and pure and free
Was the first impulse of the gale
That urged life's wave for thee!

Why did the pilot, too confiding
Dream o'er that Ocean's foam?
And trust in Pleasure's careless guiding
To bring his vessel home?

For, well, he knew what dangers frowned,
What mists would gather dim,
What rocks and shelves and sands lay round
Between his port and him --

The very brightness of the sun,
The splendour of the main,
The wind that bore him wildly on
Should not have warned in vain

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!





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