Death by Emily Bronte

Full Text

Death! that struck when I was most confiding
In my certain faith of joy to be -
Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing
From the fresh root of Eternity!

Leaves, upon Time's branch, were growing brightly,
Full of sap, and full of silver dew;
Birds beneath its shelter gathered nightly;
Daily round its flowers the wild bees flew.

Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom;
Guilt stripped off the foliage in its pride;
But, within its parent's kindly bosom,
Flowed for ever Life's restoring-tide.

Little mourned I for the parted gladness,
For the vacant nest and silent song -
Hope was there, and laughed me out of sadness;
Whispering, " Winter will not linger long!"

And, behold! with tenfold increase blessing,
Spring adorned the beauty-burdened spray;
Wind and rain and fervent heat, caressing,
Lavished glory on that second May!

High it rose - no winged grief could sweep it;
Sin was scared to distance with its shine;
Love, and its own life, had power to keep it
From all wrong - from every blight but thine!

Cruel Death! The young leaves droop and languish;
Evening's gentle air may still restore -
No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish -
Time, for me, must never blossom more!

Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish
Where that perished sapling used to be;
Thus, at least, its mouldering corpse will nourish
That from which it sprung - Eternity.

Overview

This poem stages a direct confrontation with death, but the argument is more surprising than it first appears. Bronte does not beg death to stay away. She invites it to strike again -- to sever time from eternity entirely. The logic is almost defiant: if death has already ruined her temporal happiness, then let it finish the job and return her to the eternal root. The "fresh root of Eternity" is the real prize; time was always just a branch. The central metaphor -- a tree whose temporal branch grows from an eternal root -- carries the entire poem. Bronte traces a full cycle: flourishing (stanza 2), loss through sorrow and guilt (stanza 3), recovery through hope (stanzas 4-5), a second flourishing even greater than the first (stanza 5-6), and then death's final blow (stanza 7). The arc matters because it shows Bronte is not speaking from ignorance of joy. She has known it twice, lost it twice, and concluded that temporal happiness is structurally unreliable. The final stanza is the theological resolution. "Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish" -- she accepts her own death as nourishment for what endures. The "mouldering corpse" feeding Eternity is not nihilism; it is a fierce faith that the eternal outlasts and absorbs the temporal. Bronte wrote this two years before dying of tuberculosis at thirty. Whether she sensed her own mortality or not, the poem reads as someone who has already made peace with the transaction.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-4

The opening is an imperative, not a lament. "Strike again" -- she is daring death, not pleading with it. The metaphor is established immediately: Time is a "withered branch" attached to a "fresh root of Eternity." Notice the inversion: time withers, eternity stays fresh. She wants death to sever the dying part from the living whole.

Lines 5-8

A pastoral flashback to when the temporal branch was thriving. "Full of sap, and full of silver dew" -- the repetition of "full" emphasizes abundance. Birds sheltered, bees circled. This is Eden before the fall, and Bronte paints it lushly so the coming losses will register.

Lines 9-12

Two personified destroyers arrive: Sorrow "plucked the golden blossom" and Guilt "stripped off the foliage." But Bronte does not despair yet -- within the "parent's kindly bosom," Life's restoring tide still flowed. The tree can recover from sorrow and guilt. It cannot, she will learn, recover from death.

Lines 13-16

"Little mourned I" -- she barely grieved because Hope personified "laughed me out of sadness." Hope speaks directly: "Winter will not linger long!" This is the voice of naive resilience, and Bronte gives it its due before breaking it. The quotation marks around Hope's words make it almost a character in a drama.

Lines 17-20

The second flourishing surpasses the first: "tenfold increase," "beauty-burdened spray." Even destructive forces -- wind, rain, "fervent heat" -- become "caressing." This is Bronte at her most Romantic: suffering itself contributes to greater beauty. The second May outdoes the first.

Lines 21-24

The peak. The branch rose so high that grief could not reach it, sin was driven away by its radiance, and love protected it "from all wrong." Then the devastating qualification: "from every blight but thine!" Death is the one force that even a fully flourishing life cannot resist. The exclamation mark carries the weight of betrayal.

Lines 25-28

"Cruel Death!" -- the only time she calls death cruel (the opening was defiant, not accusatory). "Evening's gentle air may still restore" offers a flicker of hope, immediately crushed: "No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish." The reversal from evening hope to morning mockery is precise -- even the natural cycle of renewal has become a taunt. "Time, for me, must never blossom more!" is the poem's emotional nadir.

Lines 29-32

The resolution. Having exhausted grief, she returns to the logic of stanza 1. "Strike it down" -- the same imperative, now earned through suffering rather than defiance. The "perished sapling" will nourish Eternity, the root from which it grew. The cycle closes: temporal life came from eternity and returns to it. Death is not destruction but composting -- the temporal feeding the eternal.

Themes

• Death as severance between time and eternity
• The unreliability of temporal happiness despite renewal
• Defiance as a mode of grief
• Hope as a force that can be outlived
• The eternal root surviving its temporal branches
• Loss as nourishment for what endures

Literary Devices

Extended Metaphor (Tree/Branch)

"Time's withered branch dividing / From the fresh root of Eternity!" — The entire poem is structured around a tree whose temporal branch grows from an eternal root. Every event -- flourishing, loss, death -- maps onto this botanical framework, giving abstract theology a concrete visual logic.

Personification

"Sorrow passed, and plucked the golden blossom; / Guilt stripped off the foliage in its pride" — Sorrow, Guilt, Hope, Sin, and Death all act as characters who physically interact with the tree. This turns inner emotional states into a narrative sequence with cause and effect.

Apostrophe

"Death! that struck when I was most confiding" — The poem addresses Death directly from its first word, establishing a confrontational relationship. Bronte speaks to death as an adversary she can challenge, not an abstraction she must accept passively.

Ironic Reversal

"No! the morning sunshine mocks my anguish" — Morning sunshine -- conventionally a symbol of hope and renewal -- becomes a source of mockery. The natural world's indifference to grief turns its beauty into cruelty.

Imperative Voice

"Strike it down, that other boughs may flourish" — The poem opens and closes with commands directed at Death. This structural choice frames the speaker not as a victim but as someone who consents to -- even demands -- the act that destroys her temporal life.

Cyclical Structure

Opening: "Strike again" / Closing: "Strike it down" — The poem returns to its opening command but with transformed meaning. The first strike is defiant anger; the final strike is earned acceptance. The repetition marks the emotional distance traveled.

Historical Context

Written around 1846 and published in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell -- the pseudonymous collection by the three Bronte sisters. Emily was "Ellis Bell." The collection sold only two copies, but the poems attracted some critical notice. Bronte wrote this during a period when the family was haunted by illness and decline; her brother Branwell was deteriorating from alcoholism and opium addiction, and tuberculosis would claim Emily herself in December 1848, two years after publication. The poem's theology -- a fierce insistence on eternity over temporal life -- reflects the intense, idiosyncratic spirituality that also pervades Wuthering Heights, published the following year. Unlike conventional Victorian piety, Bronte's eternity is wild and impersonal, more force of nature than Christian heaven.