Emily Brontë
The wind on Crow Hill was her darling. His fierce, high tide in her ear was her secret. But his kiss was fatal. Through her dark Paradise ran The stream she loved too well That bit her breast. The shaggy sodden king of that kingdom Followed through the wall And lay on her love-sick bed. The curlew trod her womb. The stone swelled under her heart. Her death is a baby-cry on the moor.
Emily Brontë - meaning Summary
Moorland as Fatal Intimacy
Hughes imagines Emily Brontë as inseparable from the harsh Yorkshire moorland associated with her life and writing. Wind, water, animals, and stone become intimate but destructive forces, turning the landscape into a dark version of paradise. The poem presents her imagination and physical vulnerability as bound together: what she loves also wounds her. Its final image makes her death seem to persist in the moor’s wild, elemental life.
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