Poem of the Week: 'Spellbound'

A winter's poem for a winter's weekend, this was written by Emily Bronte, the most enigmatic of the Bronte sisters (and author of the extraordinary Wuthering Heights). Living in Haworth, on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors, Bronte spent many a day wandering the barren wilderness on her doorstep, whatever the season.

This is a poem about the power of nature; but it is also about the way she is attracted by nature at its most wild and dangerous. A wintry night on the moors should, by rights, send her back home to a nice warm fire; but, instead, she is mesmerised by the magic and beauty of the moors in winter. So powerful is the scene in which she finds herself, in fact, that she is almost in a trance:

Spellbound by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.