Cold in the earth is a poem about Brontes struggle to remember or forget her lover, and her attempts to achieve self-understanding

  The idea of love being experienced but not touched is similar to the idea of love being felt, not seen, because we inevitably use our hearts to feel Bronte’s experience. What Bronte’s feelings towards her lover are an obsessive love experienced by her and she is unable to ‘seek the empty world again’, which means moving on with her life. The poem illustrates her attempts in moving on and forgetting about her love – from ‘check tears of useless passion’ to ‘weaned my young soul… ‘ – this shows Bronte suppressing her own emotions deliberately in order to stop herself from committing suicide. Therefore this poem is actually illustrating her experience to learn about ‘how existence can be cherished… without the aid of joy’, and her psychological experience as she struggled between conflicting thoughts.  Also, through the poem, Bronte illustrates her concept of love as an obsessive, confusing experience in her life

Bronte displays love being shared and never forgotten by emphasing on her bond with her lover, and her everlasting love to him. This is evident in ‘I dare not let it languish’ and ‘Dare not indulge in Memory’s rapturous pain’-  Although Bronte constantly brings forth the necessity of forgetting her lover (‘forgive if I forget thee’), as reminiscing her lover pains her very deeply, she uses ‘dares not’ to show her underlying reluctance to let go of her memories, because these memories are the only sources for Bronte to remember their ‘golden dreams’ – the memories they shared, which is the only thing that she has got of her lover now. These memories bring her happiness and consolation, so they are ‘rapturous pain’ which means pain which brings her pleasure or delight. Although Bronte can see her lover no more, she still feels his presence when she replays these memories, and they are never forgotten. In line 19 and 20 (‘All my life’s bliss from thy dear life was given – all my life’s bliss is in the grave with thee), Bronte links her lover and her spirits together. Their memories are shared. This displays how the days of ‘golden dreams’, indicating their shared experiences, and their mutual ‘bliss’ link between them. An intangible, untouchable bond with each other was created, which also corresponds to her portrayal of love as something experienced and not touched. This shows Bronte’s emotional dependence on her lover. The death of her lover robs her of all the pleasures and happiness in Bronte’s life. In ‘for ever, ever more’, the word ‘ever’ is placed on an emphasis as it is repeated. This is used to emphasize Bronte’s everlasting love with her lover. The rhetorical question in the last couplet – ‘How could I seek the empty world again?’ implies that her cycle is never-ending, and the rhyming words ‘pain’ and ‘again’ at the last stanza are illustrative of ‘memory’s rapturous pain’. She also uses progressives and continuous tense, e.g. ‘could’, ‘drinking’ to refer to the future, which she still expects her love to stay in her heart in the future. She also uses juxtaposition between the changing nature of seasons to her unchanging feelings, e.g. ‘fifteen wild Decembers’ to ‘spring’ shows seasonal changes.

The idea of her love as frozen snow in line 1 has figuratively melted into ‘wave’ (l. 4) and turned to streams running among ‘brown hills’, ‘into spring’, then returning to ocean’s tides, then finally as ‘Tears of useless passion’ as her final show of her ongoing grief. Her love and grief are in-motion, non-stopping – they run through the whole poem in different forms. Love is also never forgotten as ‘fifteen wild December’ has passed, and she still thinks of her lover all the time.

‘Cold in the earth’ is a poem about Bronte’s struggle to remember or forget her lover, and her attempts to achieve self-understanding (although she seems to be unsuccessful in making a decision in the end). Bronte believes that love is abstract because it is experienced, not touched. Her lover is in the grave yet she is alive, and she her love for her lover is still overwhelming. Through this notion, their love transcends from a physical dimension to a spiritual one, where their love still exists even without any physical contact and being separated by mortality.