O come with me, thus ran the song,
The moon is bright in Autumn’s sky,
And thou hast toiled and laboured long
With aching head and weary eye.

Emily Jane Brontë

I stumbled across this poem recently. I realized that while I knew of the Brontë sisters’ novels, I knew very little of their poetry. This one stuck out to me in particular. There is something about the brevity, the ambiguity within specific detail, the ethereal nature that draws me to this poem.

I enjoy writing brief poems. Although I tend towards narrative poetry, especially recently, that continues for as long as is necessary to tell the story I wish to convey, I also love the one verse poem. Within it is captured a little world, a moment of time and space. An emotion. So it is here.

“O come with me” is a little window into a time now past stretching beyond the seconds of its happening. Is this a moment turning from summer to fall? Or resting from the harvest at the start of winter? Who has toiled, and why speak so late at night? Sometimes when I read the poem, I see her talking to someone she loves, begging them to rest with her. But perhaps she is speaking to the moon, the companion of every author. Together, they come to the end of Autumn, the moon begins to wane, resting his weary head after watching the world so long with tired eye. So, she invites him to rest with her, a reflection of herself.

Or perhaps this is a poem of something else entirely. I cannot say. I feel a longing, a weary tension, crisp air, and a warm touch until the fading light of this lesser light. And that is in part of what I love about short poems. For though they are brief, they hold so much within them.

Blessings to you and yours,

~Madelyn Rose Craig