Page:Emily Bronte (Robinson 1883).djvu/146

134 on the hilltop. I have quoted that windy night in a line—

Here is another verse to show how well she watched from her bedroom's wide window the grey far-stretching skies above the black far-stretching moors—

Such direct, vital touches recall well-known passages in 'Wuthering Heights:' Catharine's pictures of the moors; that exquisite allusion to Gimmerton Chapel bells, not to be heard on the moors in summer when the trees are in leaf, but always heard at Wuthering Heights on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of steady rain.

But not, alas! in such fantasy, in such loving intimacy with nature, might much of Emily's sorrowful days be passed. Nor was it in her nature that all her dreams should be cheerful. The finest songs, the most peculiarly her own, are all of defiance and mourning, moods so natural to her that she seems to scarcely need the intervention of words in their confession. The wild, melancholy, and elevating music of which Charlotte wisely speaks is strong enough to move our very hearts to sorrow in such verses as the following, things which would not touch us at all were they written in prose; which have no personal note. Yet listen—

Death! that struck when I was most confiding

In my certain faith of joy to be

Strike again, Time's withered branch dividing

From the fresh root of Eternity!