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Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë (30 July 1818 - 19 Decemember 1848) English novelist and poet
I Am the Only Being (1836)
- I am the only being whose doom
No tongue would ask no eye would mourn
I never caused a thought of gloom
A smile of joy since I was born
In secret pleasure—secret tears
This changeful life has slipped away
As friendless after eighteen years
As lone as on my natal day
- First melted off the hope of youth
Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew
And then experience told me truth
In mortal bosoms never grew
'Twas grief enough to think mankind
All hollow servile insincere
But worse to trust to my own mind
And find the same corruption there
Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee (May 1841)
- Shall Earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall Nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving—
Come back and dwell with me—
- I've watched thee every hour—
I know my mighty sway—
I know my magic power
To drive thy griefs away—
- Then let my winds caress thee—
Thy comrades let me be—
Since naught beside can bless thee
Return and dwell with me—
The Prisoner (October 1845)
- He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars;
Winds take a pensive tone and stars a tender fire
And visions rise and change which kill me with desire—
- But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and feirce impatience ends
Mute music sooths my breast— unuttered harmony
That I could never dream till earth was lost to me.
- Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels—
Its wings are almost free, its home, its harbour found;
Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound—
- O, dreadful is the check— intense the agony
When the ear begins to hear and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,
The soul to feel the flesh and the flesh to feel the chain.
Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of Hell, or bright with heavenly shine
If it but herald Death, the vision is divine—
What Use Is It To Slumber Here?
- What use is it to slumber here:
- Though the heart be sad and weary?
- What use is it to slumber here
- Though the day rise dark and dreary?
- For that mist may break when the sun is high
- And this soul forget its sorrow
- And the rose ray of the closing day
- May promise a brighter morrow.
Wuthering Heights (1847)
- I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. ~ Catherine
- I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and HE remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. - My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable… ~ Catherine
- I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place, and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I would have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then - if you don't believe me, you don't know me - till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!' ~ Heathcliff
- Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you - haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul! ~Heathcliff
No Coward Soul Is Mine (1848)
- No coward soul is mine,
- No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere :
- I see Heaven's glories shine,
- And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.
- O God within my breast,
- Almighty, ever-present Deity!
- Life —that in me has rest,
- As I —undying Life —have power in Thee!
- Vain are the thousand creeds
- That move men's hearts : unutterably vain ;
- Worthless as withered weeds,
- Or idlest froth amid the boundless main…
- With wide-embracing love
- Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
- Pervades and broods above,
- Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
- Though earth and moon were gone,
- And suns and universes ceased to be,
- And Thou wert left alone,
- Every existence would exist in Thee.
- There is not room for Death,
- Nor atom that his might could render void :
- Thou —THOU art Being and Breath,
- And what THOU art may never be destroyed.
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