2nd June 1846

The Parsonage, Haworth

My one, my only Lydia,

Your letter affected me so deeply that I was incapacitated for some days. Charlotte says they feared for my life. Oh, that unfeeling fiend, who once had the honor of calling you his wife! Lydia, must I abandon all hope? I penned the following poem when I recovered my powers of speech and thought to title it “Lydia Gisborne” in anticipation of the day when you will cast off the shackles of your husband’s name and tyrannous last will and testament.

Yours, even in the face of cruel rejection,

Branwell Brontë

LYDIA GISBORNE

On Ouse’s grassy banks—last Whitsuntide,

I sat, with fears and pleasures, in my soul

Commingled, as “it roamed without control,”

O’er present hours and through a future wide

Where love, me thought, should keep, my heart beside

Her, whose own prison home I looked upon:

But, as I looked, descended summer’s sun,

And did not its descent my hopes deride?

The sky though blue was soon to change to grey—

I, on that day, next year must own no smile—

And as those waves, to Humber far away,

Were gliding—so, though that hour might beguile

My Hopes, they too, to woe’s far deeper sea,

Rolled past the shores of Joy’s now dim and distant isle.