Often rebuked, yet always back returning <br />To those first feelings that were born with me, <br />And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning <br />For idle dreams of things which cannot be: <br />To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region; <br />Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; <br />And visions rising, legion after legion, <br />Bring the unreal world too strangely near. <br /> <br />I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces, <br />And not in paths of high morality, <br />And not among the half-distinguished faces, <br />The clouded forms of long-past history. <br /> <br />I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: <br />It vexes me to choose another guide: <br />Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding; <br />Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side <br /> <br />What have those lonely mountains worth revealing? <br />More glory and more grief than I can tell: <br />The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling <br />Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell. <br /> <br /> <br />Harold Bloom calls this Emily Brontë's finest poem; however, C.W. Hatfield, who edited her poems, speculates that Charlotte wrote or revised this poem. It first appeared in the 1850 edition of Emily's novel and poems; no manuscript version of this poem is known.<br /><br />Emily Jane Brontë<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/often-rebuked-yet-always-back-returning/
