Emily Brontë – Start not….
by Elouise
Death is on my mind. Especially since I’m in the last chapter of my life—however long or short it may be. The photo above shows the Haworth churchyard as it may have looked in Emily B’s time. Note the flat-stone grave markers, like beds. My comments follow Emily’s poem and a second photo.
Start not upon the minster wall
Sunshine is shed in holy calm
And lonely though my footsteps fall
The saints shall shelter thee from harmShrink not if it be summer noon
This shadow should right welcome be
These stairs are steep but landed soon
We’ll rest us long and quietlyWhat though our path be o’er the dead
They slumber soundly in the tomb
And why should mortals fear to tread
The pathway to their future home?Emily Brontë, from Brontë Poems, p. 33
Published by Alfred A. Knopf 1996
© 1996 by David Campbell Publishers Ltd.
Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818, and died on 19 December 1848, one month after her younger brother Bramwell’s death. She lived most of her adult life in Haworth, Yorkshire, where her father was the parson. The photo above shows the main street in the 1800s. The parsonage and churchyard were near the top of the steep climb uphill. The major things missing from the photo are horses, garbage of all kinds flowing downhill, and the stench.
When I read this poem, I imagine Emily B walking up the steep hill beside me, coaching and encouraging me.
First Stanza
Don’t flinch or turn aside! Don’t be startled when you ‘come upon’ the path leading to the churchyard wall, looming at the end. Don’t swerve with dread, like horses in the heat of battle. Stay calm. Trust you’re in the best of hands. It will warm and brighten your way.
Yes, it’s uncanny and even frightening to hear your own footsteps on the stony path up this particular hill. Just remember all the saints who went this way before you. You can’t see them, but they’re cheering you on, encouraging you to stay the course instead of breaking away as though you could escape harm, pain or death.
Second Stanza
Yes, the noonday sun is blazing hot right now. Don’t try to hide from it. Look up ahead! There’s a shadow that will welcome you sooner, not later. It probably feels steeper now than it did at the beginning. It’s normal to be weary of the uphill grind. Still, your goal is just ahead. It won’t be long now. Then we can rest for a long time in utter quiet.
Third Stanza
It doesn’t matter that this path might have us walking on resting places of the dead. They’re already sleeping soundly beneath the ground in the churchyard. Besides….
…why should mortals fear to tread
The pathway to their future home?
Something like that, I think.
Thanks for visiting and reading, even though the topic isn’t everyone’s favorite.
Elouise♥
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 September 2018
Photos found at kleurrijkbrontesisters.blogspot.com
Telling the Truth 
“Just remember all the saints who went this way before you. You can’t see them, but they’re cheering you on, encouraging you to stay the course …”
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🙂
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I often think of my friend, so different from me, yet we possessed a deep friendship. I want to tell her that I am finishing my doctorate in theology, that she influenced my present as a pastor in a thousand ways. Her last email to me said, “I have no words.” This came the day after my daughter died. She knew my heart. I am thankful for my friendship with your sister, and I still think of her often. Margaret
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Oh, Margaret….Thank you so much for this note about your life. Diane is looking on, I’m sure, with tears in her eyes and a smile on her face! Congratulations on your milestones. Your daughter is bursting with pride as well. So many we love have gone on ahead of us, resting and waiting. Elouise
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Elouise, I may be treating life too simply but although I am the same age as you I do not think deeply upon death. No man knoweth……etc .etc.
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It’s true. We don’t know when…which, however, has become sooner in the last several years! I also know that watching my sister Diane die of ALS, and my parents’ deaths, especially my father’s, has made me all too aware of my numbered days. Diane showed me how to die over a painfully short ten years. My mother showed me how to die peacefully though not without sorrow. My father fought death right up to the very last. So yes, I think about it every day. Not in a morbid way, but in a hopeful and sober way. It makes my choices from one day to the next clearer than they might otherwise be.
Thanks for your comment. You often get me thinking more deeply. For which I’m most grateful! 🙂
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” I think about it every day. Not in a morbid way, but in a hopeful and sober way. ”
That sounds like a very constructive approach,. I, too, think about it amost every day.
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we were in Charleston SC years ago in an old cemetery (a place I’ve always found to inspire peace and introspection of self) and they had crypts like that, like beds laid out, always thrilled me to be amongst the no longer, although it often felt like their spirit was their speaking with me and inspiring me through rough times ❤
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Yes….I always look for the very oldest, with all the little remaining clues about who they were and what they were like. Especially, but not only the women. And the babies and children. I love your very last comment about their spirits helping you through tough times. 💜💕
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In 1944 my brother and I was sent to Lancashire whilst my mother was in the last couple of months of pregnancy and the street we lived on in Burnley was very much like that in the photo.
At the very end in the distance of that street was the coal mine and every morning before dawn I’d awaken to the sounds of the miners clogs, (they wore clogs not boots this was wartime and the boots went to the troops). clomping along the cobblestoned street.
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What a sound that must have made every morning. Thanks for this memory. I’ve often wondered what it would have been like to grow up in places like these.
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