On this day in 1848 Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, died at the tragically early age of 30. The most reclusive of the Brontë sisters, Emily seems to have had few friends and indeed spoke to few people outside her family; many thought her book had been written by a man. It was her only novel. How she managed to write a work of such passion and emotion while living in seclusion, it is hard to imagine. Emily wrote poetry too, but today’s offering are the sad and moving lines that her sister Charlotte wrote on losing her, On the Death of Emily Jane Brontë:

My darling thou wilt never know
The grinding agony of woe
That we have bourne for thee,
Thus may we consolation tear
E’en from the depth of our despair
And wasting misery.
The nightly anguish thou art spared
When all the crushing truth is bared
To the awakening mind,
When the galled heart is pierced with grief,
Till wildly it implores relief,
But small relief can find.
Nor know’st thou what it is to lie
Looking forth with streaming eye
On life’s lone wilderness
Then since thou art spared such pain
We will not wish thee here again;
He that lives must mourn.
God help us through our misery
And give us rest and joy with thee
When we reach our bourne!

Today I give thanks for all great writers and seek to appreciate how the emotions of real life can be expressed in written form.