Collection of poems : autograph manuscript signed : [Haworth]
The Henry Houston Bonnell Brontë Collection. Bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969
And that each feature soft and fair
And every curl of golden hair,
Some sweet remembrance bears.
3
Just then thou didst recall to me
A distant long forgotten scene;
One smile and one sweet word from thee
Dispelled the years that rolled between,
I was a little child again,
And every after joy and pain,
Seemed never to have been.
4
Tall forest trees waved over me,
To hide me from the heat of day,
And by my side a child like thee,
Among the summer flowerets lay.
He was thy sire: thou merry child.
Like thee he spoke, like thee he, smiled
Like thee he used to play,
5
O Mary those were calm and happy days,
We loved each other fondly then
“Verses to a Child” (pp. 12–15)
Composed 21 August 1838, when Brontë was eighteen. Written in the voice of Alexandrina Zenobia. First published in Poems (1902), pp. 195–97. Poem 8 in Chitham (1979); pp. 461–63 in Alexander (2010).