My soul is awakened
- MY soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring,
- And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
- For, above, and around me, the wild wind is roaring,
- Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
- The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
- The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
- The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
- The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.
- I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
- The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray,
- I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing
- And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!
- Anne Brontë(1820-1849)
Anne Brontë was the youngest of the four Brontë children. Her novel,
Agnes Grey, is a readable work but she was not as successful as her siblings
Charlotte Brontë (
Jane Eyre) and
Emily Brontë (
Wuthering Heights).
Anne does a fine job here of taking emotions and allowing the images and setting to speak for them along with language to catch and carry the reader along. A good example for those who aspire to write poetry and intensity of feelings it's full of energy about the joy of the moment. She composed this piece in December 1842 at the bottom she noted "Composed in the Long Plantation on a wild bright windy day ".
Thorp Green was the place where she served as governess with the Robinson family for a period of her life and the Long Plantation was a neighboring wood. The last line refers to Scarborough, where she had been with the Robinsons several months earlier. South Sands is located there, a promenade wall along a sections of Scarborough's shoreline. Where one description relates, "Even on relatively calm days in the height of summer, holiday makers are frequently treated to spectacular displays of thunderous water-jets spraying many yards into the air, and crashing down across the pathways and roads". This is also the same setting where Anne describes in a chapter of Agnes Grey, "I have spent much time in this area, and frequently seen the sea crashing against these rocks - firing great rockets of spray into the air..." It's plain to see she rejoiced there in the beauty and wildness of nature.
Sources:
Blair, Bob:
http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/000117.htm
Conference Center:
www.spring.net/
Public Domain text taken from the Poet’s Corner:
http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/bronte02.html#a1
CST Approved.