1. Pale Sisters! reared amid the purple sea

2. Of windy moorland, where, remote, ye plied

3. All household arts, meek, passion-taught and free,

4. Kinship your joy and Fantasy your guide!

5. Ah! Who again ’mid English heaths shall see

6. Such strength in frailest weakness, or so fierce

7. Behest on tender women laid, to pierce

8. The world’s dull ear with burning poetry?

9. Whence was your spell? and at what magic spring,

10. Under what guardian Muse, drank ye so deep

11. That still ye call and we are listening;

12. That still ye plain to us and we must weep?

13. Ask of the winds that haunt the moors, what breath

14. Blows in their storms, outlasting life and death!

Myth or myths?

A sombre moor – a treeless expanse of barely inhabited upland swept by savage storms. Three solitary figures, struggling against the wind or, perhaps, sitting in the austere parsonage, reading, writing and eagerly conversing about life, and literature, and love. From their talk rise other figures in similar landscapes, suffering, even tragic, but likewise bold and eager in claiming their share of 'life, fire, incident'. Jane and Rochester, Catherine and Heathcliff are names that shape the dreams of the young and haunt the minds of the old.