Darryl Friesen’s Reviews > The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë > Status Update

“Gleneden’s Dream” is wonderful! Such vivid, powerful language and images!

Emily Brontë only knows D words: despair, darkness, desolation, dismal, drear, distress, dread, doubt, dungeon, doom…

I gotta say, not loving this. It’s like 12-year-old Anne Shirley’s juvenile writing attempts at shock, horror, and sensation…

“I die; but when the grave shall press”

Beautiful and hopeful! ❤️

For a change… 😅

Finally read a poem that really resonated with me!! “Far Away Is The Land Of Rest” Beautiful!

“Silence whets the fang of pain…”

It’s turns of phrase like that which make this such satisfying reading…

But “dreary” remains the most-used word… 😮‍💨

So much that is “drear,” “horror,” “grief,” “desolate,”… It’s a bit repetitive…

“First melted off the hope of youth,
Then fancy’s rainbow fast withdrew;
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew.

‘Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow, servile, insincere;
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there.”

I mean, honesty and self-awareness is good, but this doesn’t lead me to think that Emily was a very happy woman…