Absentees - Scrivener

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