Poets From England

"(Whom do you consider your literary heroes?) Toni Morrison, Grace Paley, Emily Brontë, Ray Bradbury, all for different reasons, all adored...(Who is your favorite novelist of all time? And your favorite novelist writing today?) All time — Emily Brontë, author of the greatest psychological novel ever written, with the most complex character ever conceived."

"Don't forget books. What would life be without them? Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, William Faulkner. Read the greats-they're great for a reason. They know how to chart the human soul. (p 32)"

"She should have been a man – a great navigator. Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty, never have given way but with life. She had a head for logic, and a capability of argument unusual in a man and rarer indeed in a woman... impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes, or her own sense of right, was concerned."

"Emily Bronte was a wild, original, and striking creature, but her one book is a kind of prose Kubla Khan, — a nightmare of the superheated imagination."

"When I first read Wuthering Heights I was ten years old and I loved it. I discovered that people in faraway places could be as passionate as those around me. Cathy Heathcliff was my first literary role model."

"The weakness of the writing in much nineteenth-century fiction is that it takes the situation for granted and indulges in the emotion; Emily Brontë lets her words explore and define the situation itself instead of saying to the reader: "This is what you must feel about it", she says: "This is what it feels like"."

"Why should Wuthering Heights appear so entirely satisfying? Perhaps because it is a symbolic representation of what Emily Brontë felt about the universe. Passionate in its beauty and intensity, as well as its spiritual fervour. Unlike those Victorian values which contemporary society, "respectable" society, held so dear, the people in Emily Brontë's novel, Heathcliff and Cathy, are neither good nor bad. They are wild or tame. They are the storm, or calm."

"My sister's [Emily's] disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favoured and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home. Though her feeling for the people round was benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought; nor, with very few exceptions, ever experienced. And yet she know them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but WITH them, she rarely exchanged a word."

"Emily is not very fond of teaching but she would nevertheless take care of the housekeeping, and though she is rather withdrawn she has too kind a heart not to do her utmost for the well-being of the children — she is also very generous soul..."

"Miss Emily était beaucoup moins brillante que sa sœur mais bien plus sympathique."

"Writing is also a profession, and, at its best, an honourable one. It has been made honourable by those who have already been members of it. Whether you like it or not, every time you set pen to paper you’re staring at the same blank space that confronted Milton, Melville, Emily Bronte, Dostoevsky and George Eliot, George Orwell and William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf and William Carlos Williams, not to mention the latest hero, Gabriel Garcia Marquez."

"Yes, as my swift days near their goal 'Tis all that I implore In life and death a chainless soul With courage to endure."

"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."

"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."

"The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night is gathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away;—"

"But when the days of golden dreams had perished, And even Despair was powerless to destroy; Then did I learn how existence could be cherished, Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy."

"Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee, While the world's tide is bearing me along; Other desires and other hopes beset me, Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!"

"Cold in the earth—and fifteen wild Decembers, From those brown hills, have melted into spring: Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers After such years of change and suffering!"

"Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far, removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?"

"I trust not to thy phantom bliss, Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour, With never-failing thankfulness, I welcome thee, Benignant Power; Sure solacer of human cares, And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!"

"But, thou art ever there, to bring The hovering vision back, and breathe New glories o'er the blighted spring, And call a lovelier Life from Death, And whisper, with a voice divine, Of real worlds, as bright as thine."

"Reason, indeed, may oft complain For Nature's sad reality, And tell the suffering heart, how vain Its cherished dreams must always be; And Truth may rudely trample down The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:"

"What matters it, that, all around, Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie, If but within our bosom's bound We hold a bright, untroubled sky, Warm with ten thousand mingled rays Of suns that know no winter days?"

"So hopeless is the world without; The world within I doubly prize; Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt, And cold suspicion never rise; Where thou, and I, and Liberty, Have undisputed sovereignty."

"When weary with the long day's care, And earthly change from pain to pain, And lost and ready to despair, Thy kind voice calls me back again: Oh, my true friend! I am not lone, While thou canst speak with such a tone!"

"A heaven so clear, an earth so calm, So sweet, so soft, so hushed an air; And, deepening still the dreamlike charm, Wild moor-sheep feeding everywhere."

"Still, as I mused, the naked room, The alien firelight died away; And from the midst of cheerless gloom I passed to bright, unclouded day."

"Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly?"

"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."

"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?"

"But first a hush of peace, a soundless calm descends; The struggle of distress and fierce 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, it is home, its harbor 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 —"

"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 kills me with desire."

"Then let my winds caress thee — Thy comrade let me be — Since naught beside can bless thee Return 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 —"

"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 —"

"The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow, And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me— I will not, cannot go."

"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"

"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."

"I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide."

"The news came to the village — the dire news which spread across the land, filling men's hearts with consternation — that Byron was dead. Tennyson was then about a boy of fifteen."Byron was dead! I thought the whole world was at an end," he once said, speaking of those bygone days. "I thought everything was over and finished for everyone — that nothing else mattered. I remembered I walked out alone, and carved 'Byron is dead' into the sandstone.""

"Should Heaven send me any son, I hope he's not like Tennyson. I'd rather have him play a fiddle Than rise and bow and speak an idyll."

"I don't suppose and his Cornish were as gentlemanly as Malorye made them, much less as genteel as Tennyson's heroes, epic shopwalkers in a well-decorated emporium of ."

"Tennyson knew his magician's business."

"[A]nswers to questions about ethical meaning cannot come from science. Tennyson... knew that the "good life"... required their successful integration. Tennyson called these two sources knowledge and reverence, personified as mind and soul. And he spoke of their union..."Let knowledge grow from more to more But more of reverence in us dwell; That mind and soul, according well, May make one music, as before.""

"Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die"

"The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions."

"Robin: No man who truly loves and truly rules His following but can keep his followers true. I am one with mine. Traitors are rarely bred Save under traitor kings."

"Forget thee… Never— Till Nature, high and low, and great and small Forgets herself, and all her loves and hates Sink again into Chaos."

"Friends, I am only merry for an hour or two Upon a birthday: if this life of ours Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry Because a year of it is gone? but Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come Whispering 'It will be happier;' and old faces Press round us, and warm hands close with warm hands, And thro' the blood the wine leaps to the brain Like April sap to the topmost tree, that shoots New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle rock'd Sings a new song to the new year — and you, Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed."

"Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day: Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away, To sleep! to sleep! Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past: Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last."