“The Night is Darkening Round Me” - Emily Brontë
“I will not, cannot go.”
- Emily Brontë
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On Callings
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I first fell for poetry’s sounds; “Spellbound” was an early love. A teenager, I’d chant it while stomping through the twilight wastelands of frigid New Hampshire.
Perhaps because I was walking, the 3 iambs per line (“the NIGHT is DARKening ROUND me”) resolved into 2 undulating beats (“the NIGHT is darkening ROUND me”–video 3 for a reading; 4 for discussion).
This two-beat rocking motion was hypnotic, enhanced by tightly alternating end-rhymes within stanzas (stanza 1: me/blow/me/go), and the repeated b-rhyme across the poem (stanzas 1-3: blow/go/snow/go/below/go). Alliteration complements rhythm & rhyme (“wild winds” “bare boughs” etc.), captivating the inner ear like the “tyrant spell” that “binds” the poem’s speaker.
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This poem’s been on my mind for 10 days. We’ve had a cumulative 3 feet of snow, and every accompanying ornamentation: bare boughs, wild winds, descending storms … you name it.
But I’m no longer transfixed by winter’s twilight. In the woods, Little Man’s tyrannical/delighted “more more” follows me as I grunt and pull his sled. It’s COLD 🥶And there’s dinner, dishes…and desperation for Netflix.
Which is nothing to the pesky, adult sensibility I’ve developed – the one with annoyingly practical observations like “bare boughs aren’t weighed with snow… that would be pines” (snow better sticks to pine needles) or “if the storm is still descending, why is there already snow on trees?” (snow melts off trees super quickly) or “wait – why is there ANY snow on the trees if there’s wild wind?” (snow blows off trees even faster than it melts). Snow might work differently in England… but still.
Yet somehow, I’m MORE grateful for the poem. We often celebrate how poetry encapsulates reality. But here, I love poetry’s artifice – its conjuring of an *enhanced* reality riddled with seductive gothic raptures and wind-swept angst (details of snowmelt – or chores - be damned!).
Brontë’s words enshrine a reality she created for me, becoming the anchor she ascribes to Nature. The poem safeguards my inner Romantic, protecting her thrill at the mysterious silence beyond the tree line.