Poem for today: "Spellbound" by Emily Brontë

The neighboring roofs are all frosted.  We are getting deeper into winter, and weather forecasts suggest that if the conditions are right, we might get a sprinkling of snow.  Because snow is rare in this part of the world, we make a big deal of it when it happens, much to the amusement of those who live in snow country.  Within a couple of minutes of snow falling, we also begin to complain about the problems it creates.

It is all a reflection of how much we are impressed by the forces of nature.  Robert Frost famously wrote about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.  Expressing similar emotions is Emily Brontë in her poem:

Spellbound  by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow. And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing dear can move me; I will not, cannot go.

Of course, Brontë preceded Frost by more than a hundred years.  I bet even a few hundred years ago, humans--poets and otherwise--found themselves spellbound by nature, and then forced themselves to keep moving because of the various promises to keep.