The Three Brontës eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about The Three Brontës.

The Three Brontës eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 276 pages of information about The Three Brontës.

Zamorna, in prison, cries out to his “false friend and treacherous guide”: 

  “If I have sinned; long, long ago
  That sin was purified by woe. 
  I have suffered on through night and day,
  I’ve trod a dark and frightful way.”

It is what Heathcliff says to Catherine Earnshaw:  “I’ve fought through a bitter life since I last heard your voice.”

And again: 

  If grief for grief can touch thee,
    If answering woe for woe,
  If any ruth can melt thee,
    Come to me now.

It is the very voice of Heathcliff calling to Cathy.

Again, he is calling to “Percy”, the father of Mary, his bride, the rose that he plucked from its parent stem, that died from the plucking.

  Bitterly, deeply I’ve drunk of thy woe;
  When thy stream was troubled, did mine calmly flow? 
  And yet I repent not; I’d crush thee again
  If our vessels sailed adverse on life’s stormy main. 
  But listen!  The earth is our campaign of war,

* * * * *

  Is there not havoc and carnage for thee
  Unless thou couchest thy lance at me?

He proposes to unite their arms.

  Then might thy Mary bloom blissfully still
  This hand should ne’er work her sorrow or ill.

* * * * *

  What! shall Zamorna go down to the dead
  With blood on his hands that he wept to have shed?

The alliance is refused.  Percy is crushed.  Mary is dying, the rose is withering.

  Its faded buds already lie
  To deck my coffin when I die. 
  Bring them here—­’twill not be long,
  ’Tis the last word of the woeful song;
  And the final and dying words are sung
  To the discord of lute strings all unstrung.

* * * * *

  Have I crushed you, Percy?  I’d raise once more
  The beacon-light on the rocky shore. 
  Percy, my love is so true and deep,
  That though kingdoms should wail and worlds should weep,
  I’d fling the brand in the hissing sea,
  The brand that must burn unquenchably. 
  Your rose is mine; when the sweet leaves fade,
  They must be the chaplet to wreathe my head
  The blossoms to deck my home with the dead.

Zamorna is tenderer than Heathcliff.  He laments for his rose.

  On its bending stalk a bonny flower
    In a yeoman’s home close grew;
  It had gathered beauty from sunshine and shower,
    From moonlight and silent dew.

* * * * *

  Keenly his flower the yeoman guarded,
    He watched it grow both day and night;
  From the frost, from the wind, from the storm he warded
    That flush of roseate light. 
  And ever it glistened bonnilie
  Under the shade of the old yew-tree.

* * * * *

  The rose is blasted, withered, blighted
    Its root has felt a worm,
  And like a heart beloved and slighted,
    Failed, faded, shrunk its form. 
  Bud of beauty, bonny flower,
    I stole thee from thy natal bower.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
The Three Brontës from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.