Emily Brontë (1818-1848) Portrait by Branwell Brontë A paper and poetry reading given at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne as part of the series ‘Poets and the Faith’ on Tuesday the 13 th of August 2024. “Darkness was overtraced on every face” Darkness was overtraced on every face Around clouded with storm and ominous gloom In Hut or hall smiled out no resting place There was no resting place but one – the tomb All our hearts were the mansions of distress And no one laughed and none seemed free from care Our children felt their fathers’ wretchedness Our homes one all were shadowed with despair It was not fear that made the land so sad The great majority of poems written by Emily Brontë are short expressions of desire, solitude, separation, isolation, hostility, distress, loss, longing, anguish, tempest, hopelessness, suffering. Readers know about these states of being from her novel. It is no secret to anyone in the world that ‘
Emily Brontë, Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Christina Rossetti 2: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-18610 Portrait by an unknown artist after Field Talfourd A paper and poetry reading given at St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne as part of the series ‘Poets and the Faith’ on Tuesday the 13 th of August 2024. Another poet named Emily from this time lived across the ocean in Amherst, Massachusetts. She spent even more time cooped up at home than Emily Brontë, whether by choice or chance. I mention Emily Dickinson because she directed that the poem we have just heard be read at her funeral. Also, as it happens, later in her life Dickinson had a portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Browning hanging on her bedroom wall. In 2009 in Great Britain, Carol Ann Duffy was named the first woman poet laureate. 159 years before, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was nominated the first woman laureate, but the job was given to Alfred Tennyson, the favourite of Queen Victoria. At the age of four Elizabeth Barrett is making up fully formed verse, by 11 she i