Scrivener

Absentees
Being raised upon the moors, in a house amid the gorse Society would rarely greet us if we closed the doors When father pulled us out of school, afraid disease would take us all I know it made our education secluded But for all the world I wouldn't give it back In autumn, 1845, I came upon, in your handwriting A book of verse so wild and terse it took possession of me And so a set of poetry in the pseudonyms of we three Went to print, and like a flint sparked the flame of a dream In fits of ink at a writing desk We made our own worlds in a kingdom of words And you were the spirit of a Joan of Arc, wuthering a private art An absentee upon the heaths as the sky fell apart And in the hour of your decline, no fear told upon your eye The doctor came, was sent away, then descended a night That eclipsed the dark night of the soul And you were barely in your grave when another turn of fate So cruel and clear, within a year took your sister away She suffered long, complained to none, the self-denial of a nun And stole away in supplication for alms of the sun I don't know any parallel I could call to mind Or render to words like mine From Letras Mania