A Reminiscence

By Anne Brontë 1820–1849 Anne Bronte

YES, thou art gone! and never more

Thy sunny smile shall gladden me;

But I may pass the old church door,

And pace the floor that covers thee.

May stand upon the cold, damp stone,

And think that, frozen, lies below

The lightest heart that I have known,

The kindest I shall ever know.

Yet, though I cannot see thee more,

'Tis still a comfort to have seen;

And though thy transient life is o'er,

'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been;

To think a soul so near divine,

Within a form so angel fair,

United to a heart like thine,

Has gladdened once our humble sphere.

Biography

In Conversations in Ebury Street (1924), George Moore declared that "if Anne Brontë had lived ten years longer, she would have taken a place beside Jane Austen, perhaps even a higher place"; in addition, he described her first novel, Agnes Grey (1847), as "the most perfect prose narrative in English literature."

If Moore's estimation of Brontë's work and potential was somewhat inflated, his claims for her served as an overdue . . .

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