THE POETASTER – A Drama

…an unedited excerpt from Scene 5 penned by Charlotte Brontë for Henry Ryhmer as Lord Charles Wellesley.

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here then I am – a martyr to the cause of honour – by an unjust judge & jurry I have been found guilty of the murder of one who had insulted me past all human sufferance. I should not have been worthy the name of man if I had tamely submitted to such treatment much less that of poet. but my heart’s blood boiled high & with the cold steel I slacked that raging fire of revenge. yes Trees dying groans went like delicious music to the insatiate depths of my dark un-fathomable soul. the soft breathings of a harp hath not such power over the might of winds & seas howling, eddying whirling gulphing roaring thundring crashing & dashing in the affrighted vast of earth & air as had that harsh death-rattle & shreik over my mysterious spirit it calmed it & I felt that inexpressible thrill of delight which once & only once before have I experienced when on a tempestuous night I stood all alone in the midst of a mighty desert entranced enwraped enfolded with the mantle of my own glorious thoughts and broodings. the yellings of a hundred ghosts arose on each successive blast that swept over the heath with wild manical moaning. O in that sublime solitude how my heart beat & my brain throbbed while I felt the blackness & ghastliness of midnight draw round me like a wall. I looked up A dark thick shroud wrapped the blue dome from mortal sight I looked down a tenebrious gloom concealed all objects with an impalpable but impenetrable veil. I heard the roar of unseen torrents & the hushed murmer of invisible groves. my strained eye-balls strove in vein to peirce this mist. A sense of suffocation came over me I shook & trembled like a poplar in a wind-shaken wood. at that moment a sudden silver light shone on the earth & revealed its features. again I looked upward. the clouds were split asunder & the moon was shining from out a deep-blue star-spangled abyss in the heavens. Heark ! there is the sepulchral bell tolling the dead hour of night – now will my fate soon be decided. whether I am to live or die. if it should be to die O that thought ’tis unendurable “The knell the shroud the mattock & the grave” to mount the scaffold to feel the adjustment of the rope. the withdrawal of the bolt. I cannot bear the idea Heark again. he comes he comes the pronouncer of my destiny.

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Further Juvenilia -> “Mama, I Have Seen the Angels !” by Patrick Branwell Brontë