The crows sailing overheard perhaps watched me while I took this survey.
I wonder what they thought: they must have considered
I was very careful and timid at first,
and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless.
A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from me niche
and a straying out into the meadow;
and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion,
and a protracted, hardy faze towards it.
'What affectation of diffidence was this at first?'
they might have demanded,'What stupid regardlessness now?'
Hear an illustration, reader.
A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank;
he wished to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her.
He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound;
he pauses–fancying she has stirred:
he withdraws; not for worlds would he be seen.
All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features:
he lifts it, bends lower;
now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty–
warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest.
How hurried was their first glance!
But how they fix! How he starts!
How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form
he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger!
How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden,
and gazes on it wildly!
He thus grasps and cries, and gazes,
because he no longer fears to waken by and sound he can utter–
by any movement he can make.
He thought his love slept sweetly:
he finds she is stone-dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house:
I saw a blackened ruin.
Excerpt from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
in need of sleeping off the sunday weather blues.
