Audio recording (download wav.file)

  (courtesy Rothe Technologies, Inc.)

Emily Brontë (1818-1848):

FALL, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;

Lengthen night and shorten day!

Every leaf speaks bliss to me,

Fluttering from the autumn tree.

I shall smile when wreaths of snow

Blossom where the rose should grow;

I shall sing when night's decay

Ushers in a drearier day.

Arthur C. Benson, ed., Brontë Poems, Selections

Branwell Brontë (New York and London: The

Knickerbocker Press, 1915) 229.