-angel knows not
That melancholy boy.

* * * * *

Blossom--that the west wind
Has never wooed to blow,
Scentless are thy petals,
Thy dew is cold as snow!

Soul--where kindred kindness
No early promise woke,
Barren is thy beauty,
As weed upon a rock.

Wither--soul and blossom!
You both were vainly given:
Earth reserves no blessing
For the unblest of Heaven.

The doomed child of the outcast mother is the doomed man, and, by the
doom, himself an outcast. The other child, the "Child of delight, with
sun-bright hair", has vowed herself to be his guardian angel. Their
drama is obscure; but you make out that it is the doomed child, and not
Branwell Bronte, who is "The Wanderer from the Fold".

How few, of all the hearts that loved,
Are grieving for thee now;
And why should mine to-night be moved
With such a sense of woe?

Too often thus, when left alone,
Where none my thoughts can see,
Comes back a word, a passing tone
From thy strange history.

* * * * *

An anxious gazer from the shore--
I marked the whitening wave,
And wept above thy fate the more
Because--I could not save.

It recks not now, when all is over;
But yet my heart will be
A mourner still, though friend and lover
Have both forgotten thee.

Compare with this that stern elegy in Mr. Shorter's collection, "Shed no
tears o'er that tomb." A recent critic has referred this poem of
reprobation also to Branwell Bronte--as if Emily could possibly have
written like this of Branwell:

Shed no tears o'er that tomb,
For there are angels weeping;
Mourn not him whose doom
Heaven itself is mourning.

* * * * *

... he who slumbers there
His bark will strive no more
Across the waters of despair
To reach that glorious shore.

The time of grace is past,
And mercy, scorned and tried,
Forsakes to utter wrath at last
The soul so steeled by pride.

That wrath will never spare,
Will never pity know;
Will mock its victim's maddened prayer,
With triumph in his woe.

Shut from his Maker's smile
The accursed man shall be;
For mercy reigns a little while,
But hate eternally.

This is obviously related to "The Two Children", and that again to "The
Wanderer from the Fold". Obviously, too, the woman's lament in "T