1. Who is the persona (speaker) in this poem? What clues are we given as to this speaker's identity and rhetorical circumstances?
2. Who is being addressed in lines 7 and 8? Why?
3. What is the speaker's attitude towards wild creatures and the forces of Nature?
4. How do the creatures mentioned in the first stanza "hide" the speaker's lady?
5. What is at the same time peculiar and erotic in line 5?
6. Who are "they" mentioned in line 11? Why is the antecedent vague?
7. Why have two rhetorical questions been posed at the close of the fourth stanza?
8. What "other sound" might the speaker be implying in the final stanza?
9. Why, implies the speaker, do the dead neither require nor expect extravagant shows of grief and mourning rituals on the part of the living (as was common in Victorian funerals)?
10. Why has Brontë employed the archaism "ween" (verb, be of the opinion or expect that) in line 9?
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Created 12 August 2004