Explore "Hope. Ellis Bell" by Charlotte Brontë on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Hope Was but a timid friend; / She sat without the grated den, / Watching how my fate would tend, / Even as selfish-hearted men.
She was cruel in her fear; / Through the bars one dreary day, / I looked out to see her there, / And she turned her face away!
Like a false guard, false watch keeping, / Still, in strife, she whispered peace; / She would sing while I was weeping; / If I listened, she would cease.
False she was, and unrelenting; / When my last joys strewed the ground, / Even Sorrow saw, repenting, / Those sad relics scattered round;
Hope, whose whisper would have given / Balm to all my frenzied pain, / Stretched her wings, and soared to heaven, / Went, and ne'er returned again!