Upon an obscure night
Fevered with Love's anxiety
(O hapless, happy plight!)
I went, none seeing me,
Forth from my house, where all things quiet be.
* * * * *
Blest night of wandering
In secret, when by none might I be spied,
Nor I see anything;
Without a light to guide
Save that which in my heart burnt in my side.
That light did lead me on
More surely than the shining of noontide,
Where well I knew that One
Did for my coming bide;
Where he abode might none but he abide.
O night that didst lead thus;
O night more lovely than the dawn of light;
O night that broughtest us
Lover to lover's sight,
Lover to loved, in marriage of delight!
[Footnote A: "St. John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul."
Translated by Arthur Symons in vol. ii. of his Collected Poems.]
* * * * *
We know what love is celebrated there, and we do not know so clearly what manner of supernal passion is symbolized in Emily Brontë's angel-lover. There is a long way there between Emily Brontë and St. John of the Cross, between her lamp-lit window and his "Dark Night of the Soul", and yet her opening lines have something of the premonitory thrill, the haunting power of tremendous suggestion, the intense, mysterious expectancy of his. The spiritual experience is somewhat different, but it belongs to the same realm of the super-physical; and it is very far from Paganism.
She wrote of these supreme ardours and mysteries; and she wrote that most inspired and vehement song of passionate human love, "Remembrance":
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee….