Jane Eyre (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to Charlotte Bronte]

Dove grey is the unfolding sky
above the lucid dreaming of her soul,
shaken- still awake at midnight
the singular one in the household
to know

there is no love without truth
and she must leave; she goes.
stern conscience holds her lantern in the rains
and all she sees is God through torrents, through disdain,
through all the village begging bread

from the living and the dead
from those who feign.
from bakers, tradesmen who won't comprehend
she is the soul's white flame,
not derelict.

once she was walking down a faery lane
that ripened into summer's gold.
once she was painting ships without a rudder
pale green foundering in an icy sea

somehow, still at liberty in the austere-extravagant imagination-
far above her given station
but not, oh not yet free.

ah, now, Lord Jesus, come and see
the frail figure lashed like Ulysses to the landscape's mast
in no watered silk, in her wilderness
not even an orphaned past

and to the hilt:

indomitable in Thee.

mary angela douglas 9 april 2013 rev.28 march 2017; 25 may 2019; rev 23 september 2020; 11 march 2023