Charlotte and Emily Brontë.
Pale Sisters ! children of the craggy scree,1
Deep dale and murmuring moorland, where ye plied2
All household arts, meek, passion-taught, and free,3
Kinship your joy, and Fantasy your guide !—4
Ah ! who again ’mid English heaths shall see5
Such strength in frailest weakness, or so fierce6
Behest on tender women laid, to pierce7
The world’s dull ear with burning poetry ?8
—Whence was your spell ?— and at what magic spring,9
Under what guardian Muse, drank ye so deep10
That still ye call, and we are listening
;11
That still ye plain to us, and we must weep ?12
—Ask of the winds that haunt the moors, what breath13
Blows in their storms, outlasting life and death !14