The Brother by Christopher James

The November 5 issue of The Spectator published a poem by Christopher James devoted to Branwell Brontë freely mixing facts and legend. The poem can be read here:

The Brother 
'All my life I have done nothing either great or good'

Branwell Brontë, you died standing up,
your talent eclipsed by whisky and genius.
A station master's assistant,
you were let go for translating Horace in the ticket office;
you made announcements only in Latin.
As a tutor, you were driven to distraction:
Mrs Robinson, seductres of Thorp Green,
she became your one blaze of excitement.
On Sundays you had the hall to yourselves;
you drank tea in the nude and read Keats in the bath.
She always said the maid was not to be trusted.
You took to the hills with your brushes
to escape the chattering of your sisters
and the prison of your father's love.
You chased phantoms across the moors.
Merely gifted, you painted yourself out of life;
and could not remember setting fire
to the bed or Emily sousing you with a bedpan.
Branwell Brontë, King of Angria, forever cast
to the shadows of history, you found laudanum
no cure for heartache or mediocrity. Your sisters'
greatest love: the brilliant boy, who never shone.

Christopher James

Igor Pomerantsev (Игорь Померанце) likes the poem so much to devoted an article to it and the Brontës on Svoboda News (Радио Свобода).