Powerful Poetry in a Song | Emily Brontë's Loss Reflection "Remembrance" | Original Music

Emily Brontë is famous for her legendary novel Wuthering Heights. The poem "Remembrance," published under her pseudonym "Ellis Bell" in a 1846 collection with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, received little attention at the time, but is nowadays considered a great work. It reflects the loss of a widow and how she copes with it years after. Remarkably, Emily herself was never married.

The poem's core is a powerful internal conflict: the speaker’s guilt over the fading immediacy of her grief versus the natural progression of life and the numbing effect of time.

This musical adaptation translates that internal monologue into a tangible, audible experience. The sparse arrangement underscores the poem's themes of isolation and introspection, offering a contemporary lens on a classic meditation on love and loss.

The score is self-written, realized with music software and AI support.

LYRICS
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?

Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover
Over the mountains, on that northern shore,
Resting their wings where heath and fern-leaves cover
Thy noble heart forever, ever more?

Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers,
From those brown hills, have melted into spring:
Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers
After such years of change and suffering!

Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,
While the world's tide is bearing me along;
Other desires and other hopes beset me,
Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!

No later light has lightened up my heaven,
No second morn has ever shone for me;
All my life's bliss from thy dear life was given,
All my life's bliss is in the grave with thee.

But, when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy.

Then did I check the tears of useless passion—
Weaned my young soul from yearning after thine;
Sternly denied its burning wish to hasten
Down to that tomb already more than mine.

And, even yet, I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?

KEYWORDS #music #setpoetry #bronte #victorian #gothic #englishpoem #englishpoet #englishpoetry #musicalpoems #musicaladaptation #cellolove #lesvodian #loss #sadpoetry #sadpoems #mourning #19thcenturyliterature