Collection of poems : autograph manuscript signed : [Haworth]
The Henry Houston Bonnell Brontë Collection. Bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969
[“The lady of Alzerno’s hall”] (pp. 9–12)
This untitled poem was presumably intended as the second part of the previous poem, “The Parting.” Brontë noted two dates at the end: the first, 1837, is the fictional date of composition by Alexandrina Zenobia; the second, 10 July 1838, is Brontë’s own date of composition (the day after she completed “The Parting”). First published in Poems (1902), pp. 192–94, with the incorrect title “The Lady of Abyerno’s Hall.” Published in The Complete Poems of Anne Brontë (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1920) with the title “The Parting,” part II. Poem 7 in Chitham (1979); pp. 459–61 in Alexander (2010).
“I wish I knew the worst,” she said
“I wish I could dispair,
These fruitless hopes this constant dread,
Are more than I can bear!” —
“Then do not hope and do not weep,
He loved thee faithfully,
And nothing short of death could keep
So true a heart from thee;
Eliza he would never go,
And leave thee thus to mourn,
He must be dead, for death alone
Could hinder his return.”
6
’Twas thus I spoke because I felt,
As if my heart would break,
To see her thus so slowly pining
For Alzerno’s sake;
But more than that I would not tell,
Though all the the while I knew so well,
The time and nature of his death;
For when he drew his parting breath
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