Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte was perhaps the greatest writers of the three Brontë sisters - Charlotte, Emily and Anne. Emily Brontë published only one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a story of doomed love and revenge. Some of her writing is rated with the best in English poetry.

She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, on July 30, 1818. Her father was the rector of Haworth from 1820. After their mother died in 1821, the children spent most of their time reading and writing. To escape their unhappy childhood, Anne, Emily, Charlotte and their brother, Branwell, created imaginary worlds. Between 1824
and 1825 Emily attended Cowan
Bridge school with Charlotte, but they were largely educated at home.

In 1835 Emily attended school at Roe Head, but suffered from homesickness and returned after a few months to the famiiarity of home. In 1837 she became a governess at Law Hill, near Halifax, where she spent six months. To facilitate their plan to keep a
school for girls, Emily and Charlotte Brontë went to Brussels in 1842 to learn foreign languages and school management. Emily returned on the same year to Haworth, where she stayed for the rest of her brief life.

Emily Bronte's only novel,
"Wuthering Heights" (1847), did not gain the immediate success that Charlotte's "Jane Eyre" did, but it has attained later fame as one of the
most intense novels written in the English language. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels
take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood.

Emily Bronte died of tuberculosis on December 19 1848.

Me Thinks This Heart

So stilly round the evening falls
The veiled sun sheds no parting smile
Nor mirth nor music wakes my Halls

I have sat lonely all the day
Watching the drizzly mist descend
And first conceal the hills in grey
And then along the valleys wend

And I have sat and watched the trees
And the sad flowers how drear they blow
Those flowers were formed to feel the breeze
Wave their light leaves in summer's glow

Yet their lives passed in gloomy woe
And hopeless comes its dark decline
And I lament because I know
That cold departure pictures mine

Last Words

I knew not 'twas so dire a crime
To say the word, Adieu;
But this shall be the only time
My lips or heart shall sue.

The wild hill-side, the winter morn,
The gnarled and ancient tree,
If in your breast they waken scorn,
Shall wake the same in me.

I can forget black eyes and brows,
And lips of falsest charm,
If you forget the sacred vows
Those faithless lips could form.

If hard commands can tame your love,
Or strongest walls can hold,
I would not wish to grieve above
A thing so false and cold.

And there are bosoms bound to mine
With links both tried and strong;
And there are eyes who lightning shine
Has warmed and blest me long:

Those eyes shall make my only day,
Shall set my spirit free,
And chase the foolish thoughts away
That mourn your memory.