Autumnal Sisterhood

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day;

Every leaf speaks bliss to me

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

~ Emily Brontë

Copyright 2014 by DM Denton

“Wait but a little while,” she said,

“Till Summer’s burning days are fled;

And Autumn shall restore,

With golden riches of her own …”

~ Anne Brontë

Copyright 2012 by DM Denton

On numerous evenings in the parlor the two of them worked on companion pieces, which excerpted read like a scripted dialogue between them.

Anne: “‘A younger boy was with me there, his hand upon my shoulder leant; his heart, like mine, was free from care …’”

Emily: “‘They had learnt from length of strife—of civil war and anarchy—to laugh at death and look on life with somewhat lighter sympathy.’”

Anne: “‘We had wandered far that day o’er that forbidden ground away—ground, to our rebel feet how dear. Danger and freedom both were there—’”

Emily: “‘It was the autumn of the year; the time to laboring peasants, dear: week after week, from noon to noon, September shone as bright as June.’”

Anne: “‘He bade me pause and breathe a while, but spoke it with a happy smile. His lips were parted to inhale the breeze that swept the ferny dale, and chased the clouds across the sky …’”

~ from Without the Veil Between, Anne Brontë: A Fine and Subtle Spirit
(quoted poetry from Emily Brontë’s Why ask to know the date—the Clime? and Anne Brontë’s  Z_________’s Dream)

 

This post was originally shared for Autumn 2018. For 2019 I add the following poem excerpt by a soul sister to Emily and Anne Brontë, Christina Rossetti, who is the focus of my WIP novel, The Dove Upon Her Branch:

Mine avenue is all a growth of oaks,

Some rent by thunder-strokes,

Some rustling leaves and acorns in the breeze:

Fair fall my fertile trees,

That rear their goodly heads, and live at ease.

− from Autumn by Christina Rossetti

 

Copyright 2019 by DM Denton

 

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