The Teacher's Monologue Currer Bell

The room is quiet, thoughts alone / People its mute tranquillity; / The yoke put off, the long task done, -- / I am, as it is bliss to be, / Still and untroubled. Now, I see, / For the first time, how soft the day / O'er waveless water, stirless tree, / Silent and sunny, wings its way. / Now, as I watch that distant hill, / So faint, so blue, so far removed, / Sweet dreams of home my heart may fill, / That home where I am known and loved: / It lies beyond; yon azure brow / Parts me from all Earth holds for me; / And, morn and eve, my yearnings flow / Thitherward tending, changelessly. / My happiest hours, aye! all the time, / I love to keep in memory, / Lapsed among moors, ere life's first prime / Decayed to dark anxiety.

Sometimes, I think a narrow heart / Makes me thus mourn those far away, / And keeps my love so far apart / From friends and friendships of to-day; / Sometimes, I think 'tis but a dream / I treasure up so jealously, / All the sweet thoughts I live on seem / To vanish into vacancy: / And then, this strange, coarse world around / Seems all that's palpable and true; / And every sight, and every sound, / Combines my spirit to subdue / To aching grief, so void and lone / Is Life and Earth -- so worse than vain, / The hopes that, in my own heart sown, / And cherished by such sun and rain / As Joy and transient Sorrow shed, / Have ripened to a harvest there: / Alas! methinks I hear it said, / "Thy golden sheaves are empty air."