Moonless above bends twilight's dome;
But what on earth is half so dear--
So longed for--as the hearth of home?

The mute bird sitting on the stone,
The dank moss dripping from the wall,
The thorn-trees gaunt, the walks o'ergrown,
I love them--how I love them all!

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.

A little and a lone green lane
That opened on a common wide;
A distant, dreamy, dim blue chain
Of mountains circling every side.

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

[Footnote A: Madame Duclaux assigns to these verses a much later
date--the year of Emily Bronte'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,