a
girl in a country parsonage in the 'forties.

But the most astonishing thing about it is its inversion of a yet more
consecrated form: "Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are
restless till they rest in Thee". Emily Bronte does not follow St.
Augustine. She has an absolutely inspired and independent insight:

Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in Thee!

For there was but little humility or resignation about Emily Bronte.
Nothing could be prouder than her rejection of the view that must have
been offered to her every Sunday from her father's pulpit. She could not
accept the Christian idea of separation and the Mediator. She knew too
well the secret. She saw too clearly the heavenly side of the eternal
quest. She heard, across the worlds, the downward and the upward rush of
the Two immortally desirous; when her soul cried she heard the answering
cry of the divine pursuer: "My heart is restless till it rests in Thee."
It is in keeping with her vision of the descent of the Invisible, who
comes

With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars,

her vision of the lamp-lit window, and the secret, unearthly
consummation.

There is no doubt about it. And there is no doubt about the Paganism
either. It seems at times the most apparent thing about Emily Bronte.

The truth is that she revealed her innermost and unapparent nature only
in her poems. That was probably why she was so annoyed when Charlotte
discovered them.

* * * * *

Until less than ten years ago it was commonly supposed that Charlotte
had discovered all there were. Then sixty-seven hitherto unpublished
poems appeared in America. And the world went on unaware of what had
happened.

And now Mr. Clement Shorter, in his indefatigable researches, has
unearthed seventy-one more, and published them with the sixty-seven and
with Charlotte's thirty-nine.[A]

[Footnote A: _Complete Works of Emily Bronte._ Vol. I.--Poetry. (Messrs.
Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.)]

And the world continues more or less unaware.

I do not know how many new poets Vigo Street can turn out in a week. But
I do know that somehow the world is made sufficiently aware of some of
them. But this event, in which Vigo Street has had no hand, the
publication, after more than sixty years, of the Complete Poems of Emily
Bronte, has not, so far as I know, provoked any furious tumult of
acclaim.

And yet ther