The Night Wind 11/12

"The Night Wind" by Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte was born in Yorkshire, England in 1818. She and her two sisters, Anne and Charlotte, enjoyed writing poetry and novels. Emily wrote many poems but only one novel, the critically acclaimed Wuthering Heights. She died in Yorkshire, England in 1848 of tuberculosis.

In summer’s mellow midnight,

A cloudless moon shone through

Our open parlor window,

 And rosetrees wet with dew.

 I sat in silent musing,

 The soft wind waved my hair:

 It told me heaven was glorious,

 And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing

To bring such thoughts to me,

 But still it whispered lowly,

How dark the woods will be!

“The thick leaves in my murmur

Are rustling like a dream,

And all their myriad voices

Instinct with spirit seem.”

I said, “Go, gentle singer,

Thy wooing voice is kind:

But do not think its music

Has power to reach my mind.

 “Play with the scented flower,

The young tree’s supple bough,

And leave my human feelings

In their own course to flow.”

The wanderer would not leave me;

 Its kiss grew warmer still.

“O come!” it sighed so sweetly;

“I’ll win thee ’gainst thy will.

 “Have we not been from childhood friends?

Have I not loved thee long?

As long as thou hast loved the night,

Whose silence wakes my song.

 “And when thy heart is laid at rest

Beneath the church yard stone,

I shall have time enough to mourn,

And thou to be alone.”

“The Night Wind” by Emily Bronte is a sensually eerie poem. Bronte achieves this mood initially through the scene she describes in the first stanza, a summer night with “A cloudless moon” that “shone through Our open parlor window.” Right away the reader gets the feeling that the narrator is alone for a reason; her solitariness is not casual and it means something.

The next stanzas detail a conversation the narrator has with the “wind”, however, the wind symbolizes death. The mysterious wind seems to be trying to coax and entice the narrator to come with it, like when it says, “‘O come,’ it sighed so sweetly, ‘I’ll win thee ‘gainst thy will.” The narrator is resisting the wind’s pull calling the voice “kind” but assuring it that it will never penetrate her mind.

The context of “The Night Wind” heavily contributes to the overall message and mood of this poem. The solitude of the narrator connects with the idea of death because no matter what humans leave behind in their earthly lives, they are alone at the time of their passing. The level of intimacy that the nighttime context brings also helps create this unnerving feeling throughout the poem. However, the narrator gives off an air of strange comfort in the night. She does not to seem taken aback or frightened of the wind that is trying to pull her away. She handles it with ease and comes to terms with her impending death at the end. This is exemplifies in the last stanza when she says “And when thy heart is laid at rest… I shall have time enough to mourn, And thou to be alone.”