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Poems of Solitude
The cheerful comforts of home, and the joys of memory and hope, form the background for an expression of inner fortitude in this moving book of solitude and sorrow. Despite the isolation of Haworth, the small Yorkshire village where she was raised, Emily Brontë manages to transcend her surroundings to give the universal themes of love, time, and death a thoroughly new and fascinating interpretation. Penned for her own consolation, and as a kind of shorthand of her soul, these poems—most of which were unpublished in her lifetime—reveal the depth and scope of her vision. Emily Brontë is the author of Wuthering Heights, one of the most popular romances of all time.
128 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2004
8 people are currently reading
1689 people want to read
About the author
Emily Brontë
1,539 books13.4k followersEmily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, storytelling, and emotional intensity.
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 1, 2020
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow
above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer
hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves
cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
NO second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
December 14, 2017
This series of incomparable poems is just a succession of brilliance.
I am so amazed at the language used.
Emily was in her teen years when she wrote this.
No idea of love, nothing to go off of but her beautiful imagination.
I love this tragic, terribly depressed tone.
Mostly of love, it speaks reality of the wickedness that goes along with the goodness.
Her beautiful language and incredibly full diction is completely breathtaking.
Something I think I will take from her poems and try to incorporate into mine, is her constant use of nature.
I try to do this now, but I don't feel that I know nature well enough to fully utilize its resources.
Emily has such a grasp on it; she often uses weather and settings as a duality as to the mood of the poem.
Nearly every poem I've read in it is brimming with imagery, aesthetics, and pain.
And nearly every poem is magic.
I am so amazed at the language used.
Emily was in her teen years when she wrote this.
No idea of love, nothing to go off of but her beautiful imagination.
I love this tragic, terribly depressed tone.
Mostly of love, it speaks reality of the wickedness that goes along with the goodness.
Her beautiful language and incredibly full diction is completely breathtaking.
Something I think I will take from her poems and try to incorporate into mine, is her constant use of nature.
I try to do this now, but I don't feel that I know nature well enough to fully utilize its resources.
Emily has such a grasp on it; she often uses weather and settings as a duality as to the mood of the poem.
Nearly every poem I've read in it is brimming with imagery, aesthetics, and pain.
And nearly every poem is magic.
April 30, 2025
Ik vond het ten eerste interessant om te leven omdat je een goed beeld krijgt van het innerlijke gevoelsleven van de auteur. Mensen die veel poëzie lezen vinden het misschien simpel, maar ik ben er blij mee want ik heb vaak moeite met poëzie begrijpen. Deze bundel was heel goed te doen. De bundel is ontzettend melancholisch. De eenzaamheid en depressieve gedachtenspinsels spatten van de bladzijdes af, ook als een gedicht alleen over de natuur lijkt te gaan. Dat sombere en donkere spreekt mij wel aan. Het is makkelijk om je in Emily te verplaatsen.
Een aantal gedichten die mij aanspraken zijn:
- All hushed and still within the house
- Love is like the wild rose briar
- But the hearts that once adored me
- Alone i sat - the summer day
- Sleep brings no joy for me
- It will not shine again
- I am the only being whose doom
Een aantal gedichten die mij aanspraken zijn:
- All hushed and still within the house
- Love is like the wild rose briar
- But the hearts that once adored me
- Alone i sat - the summer day
- Sleep brings no joy for me
- It will not shine again
- I am the only being whose doom
December 14, 2017
I'm trying to get into poetry and this was a decent book of poetry, but I still don't get it. I'll keep trying though.
June 27, 2023
She gets it
February 3, 2021
‘Poems of Solitude’ includes some of her best.
e.g.
.
O Dream, where art thou now?
Long years have past away
Since last, from off thine angel brow
I saw the light decay.
Alas, alas for me
Thou wert so bright and fair,
I could not think thy memory
Would yield me nought but care!
The sun-beam and the storm,
The summer-eve divine,
The silent night of solemn calm,
The full moon's cloudless shine,
Were once entwined with thee,
But now with weary pain,
Lost vision! 'tis enough for me —
Thou canst not shine again.
…
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
..
And like myself lone, wholly lone,
It sees the day's long sunshine glow;
And like myself it makes its moan
In unexhausted woe.
Give we the hills our equal prayer:
Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea;
We ask for nothing further here
But our own hearts and liberty.
Ah! could my hand unlock its chain,
How gladly would I watch it soar,
And ne'er regret and ne'er complain
To see its shining eyes no more.
But let me think that if to-day
It pines in cold captivity,
To-morrow both shall soar away,
Eternally, entirely Free.
…
Month after month, year after year,
My harp has poured a dreary strain;
At length a livelier note shall cheer,
And pleasure tune its chords again.
What though the stars and fair moonlight
Are quenched in morning dull and grey?
They are but tokens of the night,
And this , my soul, is day.
..
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow
above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer
hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves
cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
NO second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
e.g.
.
O Dream, where art thou now?
Long years have past away
Since last, from off thine angel brow
I saw the light decay.
Alas, alas for me
Thou wert so bright and fair,
I could not think thy memory
Would yield me nought but care!
The sun-beam and the storm,
The summer-eve divine,
The silent night of solemn calm,
The full moon's cloudless shine,
Were once entwined with thee,
But now with weary pain,
Lost vision! 'tis enough for me —
Thou canst not shine again.
…
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
..
And like myself lone, wholly lone,
It sees the day's long sunshine glow;
And like myself it makes its moan
In unexhausted woe.
Give we the hills our equal prayer:
Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea;
We ask for nothing further here
But our own hearts and liberty.
Ah! could my hand unlock its chain,
How gladly would I watch it soar,
And ne'er regret and ne'er complain
To see its shining eyes no more.
But let me think that if to-day
It pines in cold captivity,
To-morrow both shall soar away,
Eternally, entirely Free.
…
Month after month, year after year,
My harp has poured a dreary strain;
At length a livelier note shall cheer,
And pleasure tune its chords again.
What though the stars and fair moonlight
Are quenched in morning dull and grey?
They are but tokens of the night,
And this , my soul, is day.
..
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow
above thee,
Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time’s all-severing wave?
Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer
hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves
cover
Thy noble heart for ever, ever more?
Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!
Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world’s tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!
No later light has lightened up my heaven,
NO second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee.
December 16, 2024
A sweet collection of reminiscings and longings. My favorite was probably "It is too late to call thee now".
"Oh, may I never lose the peace
that lulls me gently now,
Though time should change my youthful face
And years should shade my brow."
"Thank the power that made thee part
Ere that parting broke thy heart,
Wildly rushed the mountain spring
From its source of fern and ling."
"For that mist may break when the sun is high,
And this soul forget its sorrow,
And the rosy ray of the closing day
May promise a brighter morrow."
"Alas, as lightning withers
The young and aged tree-
Both they and I shall fall beneath
The fate we cannot flee."
"Oh, may I never lose the peace
that lulls me gently now,
Though time should change my youthful face
And years should shade my brow."
"Thank the power that made thee part
Ere that parting broke thy heart,
Wildly rushed the mountain spring
From its source of fern and ling."
"For that mist may break when the sun is high,
And this soul forget its sorrow,
And the rosy ray of the closing day
May promise a brighter morrow."
"Alas, as lightning withers
The young and aged tree-
Both they and I shall fall beneath
The fate we cannot flee."
October 4, 2024
I liked this book and you could definitely tell that Emily Bronte was boy the happiest of people. A lot of her poems were fall and nature themed so I honestly think it was a perfect read for right now in this September-October weather. It was a good transition book too into fall reading.
October 18, 2018
[4.5 stars]
February 24, 2019
Some poems are good. They read like a concentrated dose of Wuthering Heights scenery description.
April 20, 2023
Great wisdom at such young age and excellent play with words.
May 6, 2025
Homebody homegirl gets it
December 14, 2017
It is a really nice collaboration of poems and really interesting. I like the poems and I love to read them when I need to relax
March 1, 2016
Wat een mooie gedichten.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews