She plunged with Catherine Earnshaw into the thick
of the tumult, and her detachment is not more wonderful than her
immersion.

It is our own imperfect vision that is bewildered by the union in her of
these antagonistic attitudes. It is not only entirely possible and
compatible, but, if your soul be comprehensive, it is inevitable that
you should adore the forms of life, and yet be aware of their
impermanence; that you should affirm with equal fervour their illusion
and the radiance of the reality that manifests itself in them. Emily
Bronte was nothing if not comprehensive. There was no distance, no abyss
too vast, no antagonism, no contradiction too violent and appalling for
her embracing soul. Without a hint, so far as we know, from any
philosophy, by a sheer flash of genius she pierced to the secret of the
world and crystallized it in two lines:

The earth that wakes _one_ human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

It is doubtful if she ever read a line of Blake; yet it is Blake that
her poems perpetually recall, and it is Blake's vision that she has
reached there. She too knew what it was

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
To hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Eternity in an hour.

She sees by a flash what he saw continuously; but it is by the same
light she sees it and wins her place among the mystics.

Her mind was not always poised. It swung between its vision of
transparent unity and its love of earth for earth's sake. There are at
least four poems of hers that show this entirely natural oscillation.

In one, a nameless poem, the Genius of Earth calls to the visionary
soul:

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.

* * * * *

Few hearts to mortals given
On earth so wildly pine;
Yet few would ask a heaven
More like this earth than thine.

"The Night-Wind" sings the same song, lures with the same enchantment;
and the human voice answers, resisting:

Play with the scented flower,
The young tree's supple bough,
And leave my human feelings
In their own course to flow.

But the other voice is stronger:

The wanderer would not heed me;
Its k