Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

016. "The Bluebell", p. 16

Anne Brontë
1820–1849

Collection of poems : autograph manuscript signed : [Haworth]

1838 Jan. 24-1841 Aug. 19
MA 2696.5

The Henry Houston Bonnell Brontë Collection. Bequest of Helen Safford Bonnell, 1969

Transcription

A bright and sunny day
’Twas when I led a toilsome life
So many leauges away;

That day along a sunny road
All carelessly I strayed,
Between two banks where smiling flowers
Their varied hues displayed

Before me rose a lofty hill
Behind me lay the Sea
My heart was not so heavy then
As it was wont to be,

Less harassed than at other times
I saw the scene was fair,
And spoke and f laughed to those around,
As if I knew no care.

But as* I looked upon the bank

*Note: Chitham (1979) transcribes the starred word as “when,” but the manuscript reads “as.”

“The Bluebell” (pp. 15–18)

Composed 22 August 1840, when Brontë was twenty. First published in Poems (1902), pp. 198–200. Poem 10 in Chitham (1979).