"The Night Wind" by Emily Bronte

{Author Bio}
Emily was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.

In summer's mellow midnight,
A cloudless moon shone through
Our open parlour window,
And rose-trees wet with dew.

I sat in silent musing;
The soft wind waved my hair;
It told me heaven was glorious,
And sleeping earth was fair.

I needed not its breathing
To bring such thoughts to me;
But still it whispered lowly,
How dark the woods will be!

"The thick leaves in my murmur
Are rustling like a dream,
And all their myriad voices
Instinct with spirit seem."

I said, "Go, gentle singer,
Thy wooing voice is kind:
But do not think its music
Has power to reach my mind.

"Play with the scented flower,
The young tree's supple bough,
And leave my human feelings
In their own course to flow."

The wanderer would not heed me;
Its kiss grew warmer still.
"O come!" it sighed so sweetly;
"I'll win thee 'gainst thy will.

"Were we not friends from childhood?
Have I not loved thee long?
As long as thou, the solemn night,
Whose silence wakes my song.

"And when thy heart is resting
Beneath the church-aisle stone,
I shall have time for mourning,
And THOU for being alone."

The time is summer and the moon is out so it it night time. The sky is cloudless and you can almost feel that summer heat and humidity but also the coolness of a summer night. "In Summer's mellow midnight, a cloudless moon shone through"-The author's description of the moon is very gentle and soft so the speaker is most likely in a place of contentment. She is almost in a dreamlike environment, alluding to the fact that it is nighttime. Although there is only one person in this poem, the night wind is acting like a second speaker telling her that "Heaven was glorious, And sleeping Earth was fair." She is alone, staring off into the night. The night wind represents her imagination and we, as the readers, are getting a glimpse of her dreams and inner conflicts. As the speaker sits by her window, her gaze is fixed on the night (a reference to her inner desires and fantasies) and she is falling into a trance — she is daydreaming – and she becomes part of the natural struggle between fantasy and reality. The speaker knows that is foolish to have imaginations. She wants to the Night Wind (her imagination) to leave because she wants to resist the temptations her imagination. She tells her imagination to go away and play with the scented flowers and the trees ("And leave my human feelings")

"A Found Poem" by Maxine Kumin

Whenever I caught him down in hew stall, I'd approach.
At first he jumped up the instant he heard me slide
the bolt. Then I could get the door open while
he stayed lying down, and I'd go in on my hands 
and knees and crawl over to him so that
I wouldn't appear so threatening. It took
six or eight months before I could simply walk in
and sit with him, but I needed that kind of trust.

I kept him on a long rein to encourage him 
to stretch out his neck and back. I danced with him
over ten or fifteen acres of  fields with a lot
of flowing from one transistion to another.
What I've learned is how to take the indirect route.
That final day I felt I could have cut
the bridle off, he went so well on his own.

                           

                                                                        ~Maxine Kumin

The main theme Maxine expresses in this poem is the idea of trust and letting go. She relates writing a poem to letting a young horse go free. As much as she wants to keep holding on to it and nurture it, she knows she must trust her instincts and let it run away on its own. The same goes for writing poetry. Maxine is implying that too often poets hang on to their creations too long because they believe there is always something that they can fix. That is true; there is always going to be something that you can tweak but there comes a point when you must trust yourself that it is complete. In the seventh and eighth stanza, she states, "It took six or eight months before I could simply walk in and sit with him, but I needed that kind of trust". This is implying that she didn't even feal comfortable reading her own writings at first and the caution she displays in the first six stanzas displays the same caution she has when writing her poems. When she states,"I danced with him over ten or fifteen acres of  fields", she means that she took the "indirect route". She didnt follow a specific order when writing. It was spontaneuous. After trusting herself, she cut the bridle off and "he went so well on his own". We can infer that she finally put away her pencil and let the world see what she had written. Many people are going to interprete the meaning of poems differently just like some people may have interpreted this poem different than I did. What is important to know that is that when writing poetry, it is okay to go about it in a slow, cautious manner and to truly take the time to make it beautiful, but it is also important to not dwell on it so much and let people create their own meaning out of it.