“The Other Two”
By Eric Pellerin
I am speaking on behalf of the other two Bronte sisters. Charlotte experienced the most attention due to the immediate success of
Jane Eyre. She also wrote more, since she lived the longest and matured by the time she produced
Villette. There is no doubt, Charlotte had the ambition to be an artist. However, we cannot forget the other two. First, there is Emily, who has become somewhat of an icon with her one novel
Wuthering Heights, and her exceptional poetry. There is also Anne, who is the other of the two other sisters. Only recently have people given
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall its proper due.
Obviously, my thesis is that someone should speak for these two brilliant artists even if no one in the class wishes to. I want you to see what I appreciate when I read these two brilliant authors. More specifically, I cite for Emily the original voice in her poetry, which also speaks in her use of dialogue to create moments that are both tragic and unique in literature. I defy you to find a more interesting novel during its time. For Anne, I content that her second novel is feminist, not merely for the plot surrounding a woman leaving her husband, but even the form of the novel which is an inversion of Pride and Prejudice in many ways.
I will begin with a poem that I believe captures what I love most about the spirit of the Bronte sisters. This poem also touches me personally, and I read it aloud often:
“The Old Stoic”
By Emily Bronte
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream,
That vanished with the morn:
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is, "Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!"
Yes, as my swift days near their goal:
’Tis all that I implore;
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.
The only thing I need is not as Petrarch often stated, love. It is liberty. We all long to be free, don’t we? How to be free and be united with someone is the problem of our age.
I will begin with
Wuthering Heights. In the following scene, Nelly recounts the fallout between Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff was outside, and Catherine tells Nelly of her plans to marry Linton, the handsome cousin from Thrushcross Grange. Please note narrative voices, as well as the powerful voice of Catherine as she declares not romantic love, but understanding another human being:
(Catherine Earnshaw) ‘Nay; you are making a jest of it: it is exceedingly ill-natured! It’s no jest to me!’ said the young lady, scowling, and turning her face to the fire.
(Nelly, narrating to Mr. Lockwood. She is the housekeeper and seen it all) ‘I’m very far from jesting, Miss Catherine,’ I replied. ‘You love Mr. Edgar because he is handsome, and young, and cheerful, and rich, and loves you. The last, however, goes for nothing: you would love him without that, probably; and with it you wouldn’t, unless he possessed the four former attractions.’
‘No, to be sure not: I should only pity him—hate him, perhaps, if he were ugly, and a clown.’
‘But there are several other handsome, rich young men in the world: handsomer, possibly, and richer than he is. What should hinder you from loving them?’
‘If there be any, they are out of my way: I’ve seen none like Edgar.’
‘You may see some; and he won’t always be handsome, and young, and may not always be rich.’
‘He is now; and I have only to do with the present. I wish you would speak rationally.’
‘Well, that settles it: if you have only to do with the present, marry Mr. Linton.’
‘I don’t want your permission for that—I shall marry him: and yet you have not told me whether I’m right.’
‘Perfectly right; if people be right to marry only for the present. And now, let us hear what you are unhappy about. Your brother will be pleased; the old lady and gentleman will not object, I think; you will escape from a disorderly, comfortless home into a wealthy, respectable one; and you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?’
‘Here! and here!’ replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: ‘in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong! ’If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’
‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’
‘But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.’
‘I tell you I won’t hearken to your dreams, Miss Catherine! I’ll go to bed,’ I interrupted again.
She laughed, and held me down; for I made a motion to leave my chair.
‘This is nothing,’ cried she: ‘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.’
Ere this speech ended I became sensible of Heathcliff’s presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further. My companion, sitting on the ground, was prevented by the back of the settle from remarking his presence or departure; but I started, and bade her hush!
‘Why?’ she asked, gazing nervously round.
‘Joseph is here,’ I answered, catching opportunely the roll of his cartwheels up the road; ‘and Heathcliff will come in with him. I’m not sure whether he were not at the door this moment.’
‘Oh, he couldn’t overhear me at the door!’ said she. ‘Give me Hareton, while you get the supper, and when it is ready ask me to sup with you. I want to cheat my uncomfortable conscience, and be convinced that Heathcliff has no notion of these things. He has not, has he? He does not know what being in love is!’
‘I see no reason that he should not know, as well as you,’ I returned; ‘and if you are his choice, he’ll be the most unfortunate creature that ever was born! As soon as you become Mrs. Linton, he loses friend, and love, and all! Have you considered how you’ll bear the separation, and how he’ll bear to be quite deserted in the world? Because, Miss Catherine—’
‘He quite deserted! we separated!’ she exclaimed, with an accent of indignation. ‘Who is to separate us, pray? They’ll meet the fate of Milo! Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff. Oh, that’s not what I intend—that’s not what I mean! I shouldn’t be Mrs. Linton were such a price demanded! He’ll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at least. He will, when he learns my true feelings towards him. Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s power.’
‘With your husband’s money, Miss Catherine?’ I asked. ‘You’ll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I’m hardly a judge, I think that’s the worst motive you’ve given yet for being the wife of young Linton.’
‘It is not,’ retorted she; ‘it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar’s sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. 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; and—’
She paused, and hid her face in the folds of my gown; but I jerked it forcibly away. I was out of patience with her folly!
‘If I can make any sense of your nonsense, Miss,’ I said, ‘it only goes to convince me that you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl. But trouble me with no more secrets: I’ll not promise to keep them.’
‘You’ll keep that?’ she asked, eagerly.
‘No, I’ll not promise,’ I repeated.
She was about to insist, when the entrance of Joseph finished our conversation; and Catherine removed her seat to a corner, and nursed Hareton, while I made the supper. After it was cooked, my fellow-servant and I began to quarrel who should carry some to Mr. Hindley; and we didn’t settle it till all was nearly cold. Then we came to the agreement that we would let him ask, if he wanted any; for we feared particularly to go into his presence when he had been some time alone.
‘Where is Heathcliff?’
‘I’ll call him,’ I replied. ‘He’s in the barn, I’ve no doubt.’
I went and called, but got no answer.
‘I want to speak to him, and I must, before I go upstairs,’ she said. ‘And the gate is open: he is somewhere out of hearing; for he would not reply, though I shouted at the top of the fold as loud as I could.’
It was a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appeared inclined to thunder, and I said we had better all sit down; the approaching rain would be certain to bring him home without further trouble. However, Catherine would not be persuaded into tranquility. She kept wandering to and fro, from the gate to the door, in a state of agitation which permitted no repose; and at length took up a permanent situation on one side of the wall, near the road: where, heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her, she remained, calling at intervals, and then listening, and then crying outright.
About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen-fire. We thought a bolt had fallen in the middle of us;
Our young lady returned to us saucier and more passionate, and haughtier than ever. Heathcliff had never been heard of since the evening of the thunder-storm;
Heathcliff leaves, only to return transformed. No one knows where he went or what he experienced, but he is well spoken, educated, and hardened. He is also described as possibly being mixed race, an orphan, and perhaps a former slave. There is something so tragic in that he never heard how Catherine truly feels about him. There is something true about that too. We sometimes never hear what people say about us. It shapes us, though. The power of words. This is why it is so important to be impeccable with our words. This novel is also about loss. Nelly is there to see the entire family die one by one. This is an experience that all the sisters felt, especially Charlotte as she was the last to survive. It is captured beautifully in a poem by Anne:
“A Reminiscence” by Anne Bronte
Yes, thou art gone and never more
Thy sunny smile shall gladden me;
But I may pass the old church door
And pace the floor that covers thee;
May stand upon the cold, damp stone,
And think that frozen lies below
The lightest heart that I have known,
The kindest I shall ever know.
Yet, though I cannot see thee more
'Tis still a comfort to have seen,
And though thy transient life is o'er
'Tis sweet to think that thou hast been;
To think a soul so near divine,
Within a form so angel fair
United to a heart like thine
Has gladdened once our humble sphere.
This longing can also be for a being we have yet to meet, but feel a void that must be filled. When you do meet that other half, as Gilbert meets Helen in
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, it can boarder obsession. The scene I chose is from the ending. Things turn out well, as they do with Austen, but there is a major difference in narration as well as the characterization of the male and female roles. Here, Gilbert has just learned that Helen has not remarried, even though he believed otherwise. He has not spoken to her out of fear and pride. He is on a walk with Helen and her son Arthur. He is narrating to a friend, as well as us:
(Gilbert, also the narrator iof this section) There was a pause, of which Arthur thought he might venture to avail himself to introduce his handsome young setter, and show me how wonderfully it was grown and improved, and to ask after the welfare of its father Sancho. Mrs. Maxwell then withdrew to take off her things. Helen immediately pushed the book from her, and after silently surveying her son, his friend, and his dog for a few moments, she dismissed the former from the room under pretence of wishing him to fetch his last new book to show me. The child obeyed with alacrity; but I continued caressing the dog. The silence might have lasted till its master’s return, had it depended on me to break it; but, in half a minute or less, my hostess impatiently rose, and, taking her former station on the rug between me and the chimney corner, earnestly exclaimed—
(Helen) ‘Gilbert, what is the matter with you?—why are you so changed? It is a very indiscreet question, I know,’ she hastened to add: ‘perhaps a very rude one—don’t answer it if you think so—but I hate mysteries and concealments.’
‘I am not changed, Helen—unfortunately I am as keen and passionate as ever—it is not I, it is circumstances that are changed.’
‘What circumstances? Do tell me!’ Her cheek was blanched with the very anguish of anxiety—could it be with the fear that I had rashly pledged my faith to another?
‘I’ll tell you at once,’ said I. ‘I will confess that I came here for the purpose of seeing you (not without some monitory misgivings at my own presumption, and fears that I should be as little welcome as expected when I came), but I did not know that this estate was yours until enlightened on the subject of your inheritance by the conversation of two fellow-passengers in the last stage of my journey; and then I saw at once the folly of the hopes I had cherished, and the madness of retaining them a moment longer; and though I alighted at your gates, I determined not to enter within them; I lingered a few minutes to see the place, but was fully resolved to return to M— without seeing its mistress.’
‘And if my aunt and I had not been just returning from our morning drive, I should have seen and heard no more of you?’
‘I thought it would be better for both that we should not meet,’ replied I, as calmly as I could, but not daring to speak above my breath, from conscious inability to steady my voice, and not daring to look in her face lest my firmness should forsake me altogether. ‘I thought an interview would only disturb your peace and madden me. But I am glad, now, of this opportunity of seeing you once more and knowing that you have not forgotten me, and of assuring you that I shall never cease to remember you.’
There was a moment’s pause. Mrs. Huntingdon moved away, and stood in the recess of the window. Did she regard this as an intimation that modesty alone prevented me from asking her hand? and was she considering how to repulse me with the smallest injury to my feelings? Before I could speak to relieve her from such a perplexity, she broke the silence herself by suddenly turning towards me and observing—
‘You might have had such an opportunity before—as far, I mean, as regards assuring me of your kindly recollections, and yourself of mine, if you had written to me.’
‘I would have done so, but I did not know your address, and did not like to ask your brother, because I thought he would object to my writing; but this would not have deterred me for a moment, if I could have ventured to believe that you expected to hear from me, or even wasted a thought upon your unhappy friend; but your silence naturally led me to conclude myself forgotten.’
‘Did you expect me to write to you, then?’
‘No, Helen—Mrs. Huntingdon,’ said I, blushing at the implied imputation, ‘certainly not; but if you had sent me a message through your brother, or even asked him about me now and then—’
‘I did ask about you frequently. I was not going to do more,’ continued she, smiling, ‘so long as you continued to restrict yourself to a few polite inquiries about my health.’
‘Your brother never told me that you had mentioned my name.’
‘Did you ever ask him?’
‘No; for I saw he did not wish to be questioned about you, or to afford the slightest encouragement or assistance to my too obstinate attachment.’ Helen did not reply. ‘And he was perfectly right,’ added I. But she remained in silence, looking out upon the snowy lawn. ‘Oh, I will relieve her of my presence,’ thought I; and immediately I rose and advanced to take leave, with a most heroic resolution—but pride was at the bottom of it, or it could not have carried me through.
‘Are you going already?’ said she, taking the hand I offered, and not immediately letting it go.
‘Why should I stay any longer?’
‘Wait till Arthur comes, at least.’
Only too glad to obey, I stood and leant against the opposite side of the window.
‘You told me you were not changed,’ said my companion: ‘you are—very much so.’
‘No, Mrs. Huntingdon, I only ought to be.’
‘Do you mean to maintain that you have the same regard for me that you had when last we met?’
‘I have; but it would be wrong to talk of it now.’
‘It was wrong to talk of it then, Gilbert; it would not now—unless to do so would be to violate the truth.’
I was too much agitated to speak; but, without waiting for an answer, she turned away her glistening eye and crimson cheek, and threw up the window and looked out, whether to calm her own, excited feelings, or to relieve her embarrassment, or only to pluck that beautiful half-blown Christmas-rose that grew upon the little shrub without, just peeping from the snow that had hitherto, no doubt, defended it from the frost, and was now melting away in the sun. Pluck it, however, she did, and having gently dashed the glittering powder from its leaves, approached it to her lips and said:
‘This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals.—Will you have it?’
I held out my hand: I dared not speak lest my emotion should overmaster me. She laid the rose across my palm, but I scarcely closed my fingers upon it, so deeply was I absorbed in thinking what might be the meaning of her words, and what I ought to do or say upon the occasion; whether to give way to my feelings or restrain them still. Misconstruing this hesitation into indifference—or reluctance even—to accept her gift, Helen suddenly snatched it from my hand, threw it out on to the snow, shut down the window with an emphasis, and withdrew to the fire.
‘Helen, what means this?’ I cried, electrified at this startling change in her demeanour.
‘You did not understand my gift,’ said she—‘or, what is worse, you despised it. I’m sorry I gave it you; but since I did make such a mistake, the only remedy I could think of was to take it away.’
‘You misunderstood me cruelly,’ I replied, and in a minute I had opened the window again, leaped out, picked up the flower, brought it in, and presented it to her, imploring her to give it me again, and I would keep it for ever for her sake, and prize it more highly than anything in the world I possessed.
‘And will this content you?’ said she, as she took it in her hand.
‘It shall,’ I answered.
‘There, then; take it.’
I pressed it earnestly to my lips, and put it in my bosom, Mrs. Huntingdon looking on with a half-sarcastic smile.
‘Now, are you going?’ said she.
‘I will if—if I must.’
‘You are changed,’ persisted she—‘you are grown either very proud or very indifferent.’
‘I am neither, Helen—Mrs. Huntingdon. If you could see my heart—’
‘You must be one,—if not both. And why Mrs. Huntingdon?—why not Helen, as before?’
‘Helen, then—dear Helen!’ I murmured. I was in an agony of mingled love, hope, delight, uncertainty, and suspense.
‘The rose I gave you was an emblem of my heart,’ said she; ‘would you take it away and leave me here alone?’
‘Would you give me your hand too, if I asked it?’
‘Have I not said enough?’ she answered, with a most enchanting smile. I snatched her hand, and would have fervently kissed it, but suddenly checked myself, and said,—
‘But have you considered the consequences?’
‘Hardly, I think, or I should not have offered myself to one too proud to take me, or too indifferent to make his affection outweigh my worldly goods.’
Stupid blockhead that I was!—I trembled to clasp her in my arms, but dared not believe in so much joy, and yet restrained myself to say,—
‘But if you should repent!’
‘It would be your fault,’ she replied: ‘I never shall, unless you bitterly disappoint me. If you have not sufficient confidence in my affection to believe this, let me alone.’
‘My darling angel—my own Helen,’ cried I, now passionately kissing the hand I still retained, and throwing my left arm around her, ‘you never shall repent, if it depend on me alone. But have you thought of your aunt?’ I trembled for the answer, and clasped her closer to my heart in the instinctive dread of losing my new-found treasure.
‘My aunt must not know of it yet,’ said she. ‘She would think it a rash, wild step, because she could not imagine how well I know you; but she must know you herself, and learn to like you. You must leave us now, after lunch, and come again in spring, and make a longer stay, and cultivate her acquaintance, and I know you will like each other.’
‘And then you will be mine,’ said I, printing a kiss upon her lips, and another, and another; for I was as daring and impetuous now as I had been backward and constrained before.
‘No—in another year,’ replied she, gently disengaging herself from my embrace, but still fondly clasping my hand.
‘Another year! Oh, Helen, I could not wait so long!’
‘Where is your fidelity?’
‘I mean I could not endure the misery of so long a separation.’
‘It would not be a separation: we will write every day: my spirit shall be always with you, and sometimes you shall see me with your bodily eye. I will not be such a hypocrite as to pretend that I desire to wait so long myself, but as my marriage is to please myself, alone, I ought to consult my friends about the time of it.’
‘Your friends will disapprove.’
‘They will not greatly disapprove, dear Gilbert,’ said she, earnestly kissing my hand; ‘they cannot, when they know you, or, if they could, they would not be true friends—I should not care for their estrangement. Now are you satisfied?’ She looked up in my face with a smile of ineffable tenderness.
‘Can I be otherwise, with your love? And you do love me, Helen?’ said I, not doubting the fact, but wishing to hear it confirmed by her own acknowledgment. ‘If you loved as I do,’ she earnestly replied, ‘you would not have so nearly lost me—these scruples of false delicacy and pride would never thus have troubled you—you would have seen that the greatest worldly distinctions and discrepancies of rank, birth, and fortune are as dust in the balance compared with the unity of accordant thoughts and feelings, and truly loving, sympathising hearts and souls.’
‘But this is too much happiness,’ said I, embracing her again; ‘I have not deserved it, Helen—I dare not believe in such felicity: and the longer I have to wait, the greater will be my dread that something will intervene to snatch you from me—and think, a thousand things may happen in a year!—I shall be in one long fever of restless terror and impatience all the time. And besides, winter is such a dreary season.’
‘I thought so too,’ replied she gravely: ‘I would not be married in winter—in December, at least,’ she added, with a shudder—for in that month had occurred both the ill-starred marriage that had bound her to her former husband, and the terrible death that released her—‘and therefore I said another year, in spring.’
‘Next spring?’
‘No, no—next autumn, perhaps.’
‘Summer, then?’
‘Well, the close of summer. There now! be satisfied.’
While she was speaking Arthur re-entered the room—good boy for keeping out so long.
‘Mamma, I couldn’t find the book in either of the places you told me to look for it’ (there was a conscious something in mamma’s smile that seemed to say, ‘No, dear, I knew you could not’), ‘but Rachel got it for me at last. Look, Mr. Markham, a natural history, with all kinds of birds and beasts in it, and the reading as nice as the pictures!’
In great good humour I sat down to examine the book, and drew the little fellow between my knees. Had he come a minute before I should have received him less graciously, but now I affectionately stroked his curling locks, and even kissed his ivory forehead: he was my own Helen’s son, and therefore mine; and as such I have ever since regarded him. That pretty child is now a fine young man: he has realised his mother’s brightest expectations, and is at present residing in Grassdale Manor with his young wife—the merry little Helen Hattersley of yore.
I had not looked through half the book before Mrs. Maxwell appeared to invite me into the other room to lunch. That lady’s cool, distant manners rather chilled me at first; but I did my best to propitiate her, and not entirely without success, I think, even in that first short visit; for when I talked cheerfully to her, she gradually became more kind and cordial, and when I departed she bade me a gracious adieu, hoping ere long to have the pleasure of seeing me again.
‘But you must not go till you have seen the conservatory, my aunt’s winter garden,’ said Helen, as I advanced to take leave of her, with as much philosophy and self-command as I could summon to my aid.
I gladly availed myself of such a respite, and followed her into a large and beautiful conservatory, plentifully furnished with flowers, considering the season—but, of course, I had little attention to spare for them. It was not, however, for any tender colloquy that my companion had brought me there:—
‘My aunt is particularly fond of flowers,’ she observed, ‘and she is fond of Staningley too: I brought you here to offer a petition in her behalf, that this may be her home as long as she lives, and—if it be not our home likewise—that I may often see her and be with her; for I fear she will be sorry to lose me; and though she leads a retired and contemplative life, she is apt to get low-spirited if left too much alone.’
‘By all means, dearest Helen!—do what you will with your own. I should not dream of wishing your aunt to leave the place under any circumstances; and we will live either here or elsewhere as you and she may determine, and you shall see her as often as you like. I know she must be pained to part with you, and I am willing to make any reparation in my power. I love her for your sake, and her happiness shall be as dear to me as that of my own mother.’
‘Thank you, darling! you shall have a kiss for that. Good-by. There now—there, Gilbert—let me go—here’s Arthur; don’t astonish his infantile brain with your madness.’
There is such a strength in this character. Gilbert appears like a love sick chld through much of the novel. Even here, Helen loves him, but she would not be broken if he didn’t requite her love. She is in total control of this situation. Much like
Wuthering Heights and
Jane Eyre, characters do get married, but it is not the point. In fact, there is no happy ending for Heathcliff and Catherine, though it does turn out well for their descendants. These works are more about actually LIVING TOGETHER. In
Wuthering Heights, life is the point. It is true in
Tenant as well. We watch Helen’s marriage through her journal. Even the most cynical would have to admit she did everything she could to keep the marriage going. There is strength, here. Wisdom.
I would like to end with a poem that combines both aforementioned geniuses. It is poem written about Anne by Emily. It is a wonderful epitaph:
“Last Lines”
By Emily Bronte
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 wither'd weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchor'd on
The steadfast rock of immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes cease to be,
And Thou were 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.
