Chain Reading

Book Details

Written by Patrick Bronte.
Buy this on Amazon ($4.95)

Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)

Patrick Bronte (born Drumballyroney, County Down, Ireland, March 17, 1777, died Haworth, Yorkshire, June 7, 1861) was an Irish Anglican curate and writer who spent most of his adult life in England and was the father of the writers Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. He was such an admirer of Nelson that he changed his name from Brunty to Bronte after the King of Naples created Nelson Duke of Bronte.

He was the first of ten children born to Hugh Brunty and Eleanor McCrory in Drumballyroney (near Rathfriland), County Down, Northern Ireland. He had several apprenticeships (to a blacksmith, a linen draper, and a weaver) until he became a teacher in 1798 and eventually moved to Cambridge in 1802 to study theology at St John's College. He gained his BA degree in 1806 and was appointed curate at Wethersfield, Essex, where he was ordained a deacon of the Church of England, and ordained into the priesthood in 1807. In 1809 he became assistant curate at Wellington in Shropshire and in 1810 he published his first poem Winter Evening Thoughts in a local newspaper, followed in 1811 by a collection of moral verse, Cottage Poems.

***
sample poem: THE SPIDER AND THE FLY.

The sun shines bright, the morning's fair,
The gossamers float on the air,
The dew-gems twinkle in the glare,
The spider's loom
Is closely plied, with artful care,
Even in my room.

See how she moves in zigzag line,
And draws along her silken twine,
Too soft for touch, for sight too fine,
Nicely cementing:
And makes her polished drapery shine,
The edge indenting.

Her silken ware is gaily spread,
And now she weaves herself a bed,
Where, hiding all but just her head,
      She watching lies
For moths or gnats, entangled spread,
      Or buzzing flies.

You cunning pest! why, forward, dare
So near to lay your bloody snare!
But you to kingly courts repair
      With fell design,
And spread with kindred courtiers there
      Entangling twine.

Ah, silly fly! will you advance?
I see you in the sunbeam dance:
Attracted by the silken glance
      In that dread loom;
Or blindly led, by fatal chance,
      To meet your doom.

Ah! think not, 'tis the velvet flue
Of hare, or rabbit, tempts your view;
Or silken threads of dazzling hue,
      To ease your wing,
The foaming savage, couched for you,
      Is on the spring.

Entangled! freed!-and yet again
You touch! 'tis o'er-that plaintive strain,
That mournful buzz, that struggle vain,
      Proclaim your doom:
Up to the murderous den you-re ta'en,
      Your bloody tomb!

So thoughtless youths will trifling play
With dangers on their giddy way,
Or madly err in open day
      Through passions fell,
And fall, though warned oft, a prey
      To death and hell!

But hark! the fluttering leafy trees
Proclaim the gently swelling breeze,
Whilst through my window, by degrees,
      Its breathings play:
The spider's web, all tattered flees,
      Like thought, away.

Thus worldlings lean on broken props,
And idly weave their cobweb-hopes,
And hang o'er hell by spider's ropes,
      Whilst sins enthral;
Affliction blows-their joy elopes-
      And down they fall!

User Reviews (0) Login or create an account to write a review.

This book does not yet have any reviews.