[edit] Haworth 1974

Thought followed thought, star followed
star. Through boundless regions on.

Emily Bronte

Night after night, round and round the room
Three sisters walked and walked,
Dreaming aloud.
Swiftly the years passed, death pounced,
And the survivor walked alone.

Now no one treads that floor
Except the curator and his staff.
Across the doorway a discreet cord
Halts the footsteps of the world
As it approaches in endless procession
To glimpse the sisters' home.

In all the wild realms
Of Angria and Gondal
No princesses held dominion
So strange, so wild as this.

Haworth, that remote grey outpost,
Has become a busy hub of pilgrimage
With a bypass to deter the tourists' cars
From choking its cobbled cliff.

The chemist's shop where Branwell
Bought packets of oblivion
Now dispenses glossy editions
Of his sisters' writings
And volumes of scholarly analysis
Estimating their place in literature
And deploring his own frustrated role.

Commerce pays its grotesque tributes:
At the Old White Lion the affluent diner
Can order coffee brewed a la Bronte.
A mile away at Stanbury the wily brewers
Have renamed the Tailors' Arms
Wuthering Heights.