holds his symbols for a while. A great writer is both a major and a
minor mystic, in the self-same poem; now suddenly close to his mystery
(which is his greater moment) and anon making it mysterious with imagery
(which is the moment of his most beautiful lines).

The student passes delighted through the several courts of poetry, from
the outer to the inner, from riches to more imaginative riches, and from
decoration to more complex decoration; and prepares himself for the
greater opulence of the innermost chamber. But when he crosses the last
threshold he finds this mid-most sanctuary to be a hypaethral temple, and
in its custody and care a simple earth and a space of sky.

Emily Bronte seems to have a nearly unparalleled unconsciousness of the
delays, the charms, the pauses and preparations of imagery. Her strength
does not dally with the parenthesis, and her simplicity is ignorant of
those rites. Her lesser work, therefore, is plain narrative, and her
greater work is no more. On the hither side--the daily side--of imagery
she is still a strong and solitary writer; on the yonder side she has
written some of the most mysterious passages in all plain prose. And
with what direct and incommunicable art! "'Let me alone, let me alone,'
said Catherine. 'If I've done wrong, I'm dying for it. You left me too
. . . I forgive you. Forgive me!' 'It is hard to forgive, and to look
at those eyes and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again,
and don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I
love my murderer--but _yours_! How can I?' They were silent, their
faces hid against each other, and washed by each other's tears." "So
much the worse for me that I am strong," cries Heathcliff in the same
scene. "Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you--Oh
God, would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"