Explore "The Missionary. Currer Bell" by Charlotte Brontë on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Plough, vessel, plough the British main, / Seek the free ocean's wider plain; / Leave English scenes and English skies, / Unbind, dissever English ties; / Bear me to climes remote and strange, / Where altered life, fast-following change, / Hot action, never-ceasing toil, / Shall stir, turn, dig, the spirit's soil; / Fresh roots shall plant, fresh seed shall sow, / Till a new garden there shall grow, / Cleared of the weeds that fill it now, -- / Mere human love, mere selfish yearning, / Which, cherished, would arrest me yet. / I grasp the plough, there's no returning, / Let me, then, struggle to forget.
But England's shores are yet in view, / And England's skies of tender blue / Are arched above her guardian sea. / I cannot yet Remembrance flee; / I must again, then, firmly face / That task of anguish, to retrace. / Wedded to home -- I home forsake; / Fearful of change -- I changes make; / Too fond of ease -- I plunge in toil; / Lover of calm -- I seek turmoil: / Nature and hostile Destiny / Stir in my heart a conflict wild; / And long and fierce the war will be / Ere duty both has reconciled.