[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later date--the year of Emily Brontë's exile in Brussels. Sir William Robertson Nicoll also considers that "the 'alien firelight' suits Brussels better than the Yorkshire hearth of 'good, kind' Miss Wooler". To me the schoolroom of the Pensionnat suggests an "alien" stove, and not the light of any fire at all.] * * * * * There was no nostalgia that she did not know. And there was no funeral note she did not sound; from the hopeless gloom of In the earth--the earth--thou shalt be laid, A grey stone standing over thee; Black mould beneath thee spread, And black mould to cover thee. Well--there is rest there, So fast come thy prophecy; The time when my sunny hair Shall with grass-roots entwined be. But cold--cold is that resting-place Shut out from joy and liberty, And all who loved thy living face Will shrink from it shudderingly. From that to the melancholy grace of the moorland dirge: The linnet in the rocky dells, The moor-lark in the air, The bee among the heather-bells That hide my lady fair: The wild deer browse above her breast; The wild birds raise their brood; And they, her smiles of love caressed, Have left her solitude. * * * * * Well, let them fight for honour's breath, Or pleasure's shade pursue-- The dweller in the land of death Is changed and careless too. And if their eyes should watch and weep Till sorrow's source were dry, She would not, in her tranquil sleep, Return a single sigh. Blow, west wind, by the lowly mound, And murmur, summer-streams-- There is no need of other sound To soothe my lady's dreams. There is, finally, that nameless poem--her last--where Emily Brontë's creed finds utterance. It also is well known, but I give it here by way of justification, lest I should seem to have exaggerated the mystic detachment of this lover of the earth: 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. To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by thine infinity; So surely anchored 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 ceased to be, And Thou wert left alone, Every existence would exist in Thee.