Passages from one of my favorite childhood books, Wuthering Heights. Emily was the kindred spirit I needed growing up. A childhood friend and I had recurrent debate for hours each time over which was better -- Charlotte's Jane Eyre, or Emily's Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights to the end!
Possibly, some people might suspect him of a degree of under-bred pride; I have a sympathetic chord within that tells me it is nothing of the sort: I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again
Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, YOU, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart YOU have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you oh, God! would YOU like to live with your soul in the grave?’
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.
May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then.
She was a wild, wicked slip of a girl. She burned too brightly for this world.
I'm happiest when most away
I can bear my soul from its home of clay
On a windy night when the moon is bright
And the eye can wander through worlds of light—
When I am not and none beside—
Nor earth nor sea nor cloudless sky—
But only spirit wandering wide
Through infinite immensity.
Heavy hangs the raindrop
From the burdened spray;
Heavy broods the damp mist
On Uplands far away;
Heavy looms the dull sky,
Heavy rolls the sea -
And heavy beats the young heart
Beneath that lonely Tree -
Never has a blue streak
Cleft the clouds since morn -
Never has his grim Fate
Smiled since he was born -
Frowning on the infant,
Shadowing childhood's joy;
Guardian angel knows not
That melancholy boy.
Day is passing swiftly
Its sad and sombre prime;
Youth is fast invading
Sterner manhood's time -
All the flowers are praying
For sun before they close,
And he prays too, unknowing,
That sunless human rose!
Blossoms, that the westwind
Has never wooed to blow,
Scentless are your petals,
Your dew as cold as snow -
Soul, where kindred kindness
No early promise woke,
Barren is your beauty
As weed upon the rock -
Wither, Brothers, wither,
You were vainly given -
Earth reserves no blessing
For the unblessed of Heaven!
Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:
To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.
I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.
I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side
What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.