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by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848)

To Imagination
Language: English 
When weary with the long day's care,
And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost, and ready to despair,
Thy kind voice calls me back again -
O my true friend, I am not lone
While thou canst speak with such a tone!

So hopeless is the world without,
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world where guile and hate and doubt
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou and I and Liberty
Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it that all around
Danger and grief and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright unsullied sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?

Reason indeed may oft complain
For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart how vain
Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy newly blown.

But thou art ever there to bring 
The hovering visions back and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted spring
And call a lovelier life from death,
And whisper with a voice divine
Of real worlds as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet still in evening's quiet hour
With never-failing thankfulness
I welcome thee, benignant power,
Sure solacer of human care
And brighter hope when hope despairs.

Available sung texts:   ← What is this?

•   J. Mitchell 

J. Mitchell sets stanzas 1, 5

Text Authorship:

  • by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848) [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

  • by David Leisner (b. 1958), "To Imagination", 1986 [ voice and piano or guitar ], from Confiding, no. 8 [sung text not yet checked]
  • by John Mitchell (b. 1941), "To Imagination", op. 17 no. 3 (1976), stanzas 1,5, from Visions from the Earth, no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]

Research team for this page: Victoria Brago , Malcolm Wren [Guest Editor]

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 36
Word count: 219

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