Anne Brontë's "The North Wind"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 10 February 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s poem grew out of an elaborate game of make-believe between the Brontë siblings, and gives some idea of the mature verse that might have been if Anne had not died young. Happy(?) reading.

Anne Brontë (17 January 1820 – 28 May 1849) was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.

Anne Brontë was the daughter of Maria (néeBranwell) and Patrick Brontë, a poor Irish clergyman in the Church of England. Anne lived most of her life with her family at the parish of Haworth on the Yorkshire Dales. Otherwise, she attended a boarding school in Mirfield between 1836 and 1837, and between 1839 and 1845 lived elsewhere working as a governess. In 1846, she published a book of poems with her sisters and later two novels, initially under the pen name Acton Bell. Her first novel, Agnes Grey, was published in 1847 at the same time as Wuthering Heights by her sister Emily Brontë. Anne's second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published in 1848. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is often considered one of the first feminist novels.

Anne died at 29, most likely of pulmonary tuberculosis. After her death, her sister Charlotte edited Agnes Grey to fix issues with its first edition, but prevented republication of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. As a result, Anne is not as well known as her sisters. Nonetheless, both of her novels are considered classics of English literature.

-bio via Wikipedia

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dailypoempod.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:08.5	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, February 10th, 2025.
0:13.0	Today's poem is by Anne Bronte, better known as the novelist and sister of Emily and Charlotte.
0:21.9	And it's called The North Wind.
0:25.8	It is a poem that grew out of a childhood game with the Bronte siblings,
0:31.8	inventing fictional lands and then writing stories and poems that take place in and about those fictional lands.
0:40.0	The favorite of Anne was a land called Gondal, and this is one of the poems set there.
0:47.8	It's in the voice of a young woman who is imprisoned in some kind of inescapable dungeon, Anne would have written this
0:57.8	when she was about 18, and it shows for that a remarkable emotional intuition as she deals
1:04.6	with these themes of isolation and consolation. And there's a kind of fairy tale element
1:10.4	when the North Wind enters and
1:12.9	speaks to her almost like a fairy godmother kind of character. Though it's not quite a happy ending that we
1:20.4	get in the final three stanzas, which are quatrains. You have these off rhymes or semi-rimes, almost, but not quite rhymes, sounds that
1:33.0	resemble one another and almost line up, maybe that even suggest one another, but aren't
1:39.5	quite in unison. And it establishes or confirms this unsteady, this unresolved nature to the story at the end of the poem.
1:49.9	Here it is, The North Wind by Anne Bronte.
1:57.7	That wind is from the north. I know it well. No other breeze could have so wild a smell. Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell, then faintly dies and softly sighs and moans and murmurs mournfully. I know its language, thus it speaks to me.
2:18.3	I have passed over thy own mountains, dear, thy northern mountains, and they still are free,
2:25.3	still lonely, wild, majestic, bleak and drear, and stern and lovely as they used to be,
2:33.3	when thou a young enthusiast, as wild and free as they,
2:38.0	or rocks and glens and snowy heights didst often love to stray.
2:43.1	I have blown the wild untrodden snows in whirling eddies from their brows,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -44 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Goldberry Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Goldberry Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.