GCSE-readyMild the Mist Upon the Hill by Emily Brontë: context, form and key methods
A misty evening after rain carries the speaker back in memory to her childhood home.
Context and Brontë's purpose
She was deeply attached to home and to the moors, and was badly homesick when she lived away. Pearson dates the poem to 1839.
Form and structure
The first stanza describes the evening landscape. The second turns sharply into memory: "Oh, I'm gone back to the days of youth, / I am a child once more". The last two stanzas blend the misty scene with the past, ending on scents that "breathe of other years".
Language and key methods
Safety of home: "And 'neath my father's sheltering roof". The word "sheltering" shows home as protection.
Repetition and colour: "Blue mists, sweet mists of summer" lingers on the soft beauty of the scene.
Simile: dew lies "As thick as morning's tears", linking nature with sorrow again.
Compare how memories of a childhood home are presented in Mild the Mist Upon the Hill and I Remember, I Remember.
- Both speakers look back to the home where they were children.
- Brontë's personified weather and senses; Hood's repeated refrain and list of details.
- AO3: Brontë's attachment to Haworth; Hood looking back as an adult.
Answer: Both Brontë and Hood present the childhood home as a place of safety that can only be reached in memory. Brontë's speaker is carried back by the weather: "Oh, I'm gone back to the days of youth", and the phrase "my father's sheltering roof" shows home as protection. Hood's refrain, "I remember, I remember", returns him again and again to small details, such as the sun that "Came peeping in at morn". Brontë's mood is gentle sadness, with a day that has "wept its fill", but Hood ends more bitterly, feeling "farther off from heav'n / Than when I was a boy." Brontë, deeply attached to Haworth, finds comfort in memory; Hood finds that remembering only shows how much he has lost.
Brontë, 1818 to 1848, Haworth parsonage, Yorkshire moors; 1839. Four ABAB quatrains; turn into memory in stanza two. "the day has wept its fill"; "I am a child once more"; "my father's sheltering roof"; "As thick as morning's tears"; "breathe of other years".
- Context
- The circumstances in which a text was written and set, such as historical events, social attitudes and the writer's life (AO3 in the GCSE, AO4 in the International GCSE).
- Form
- The type and shape of a text: for example sonnet, ballad, free verse, tragedy, comedy, novel or play.
- Speaker
- The voice of a poem. The speaker is not always the poet.
- Stanza
- A group of lines forming a section of a poem (a verse).
- Rhyme scheme
- The pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, labelled with letters, such as ABAB.
- Personification
- Giving human qualities to something non-human.
All GCSE and International GCSE English Literature key terms and definitions →
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Last updated 6 November 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix it.