
"I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide: Where the grey flocks in ferny glens are feeding; Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side." -Emily Bronte (Stanzas)
Emily Bronte was the daughter of an Anglican vicar yet her own faith was based not on traditional religious attitudes, but on her own experience which was rooted in nature rather than a physical Church or specific doctrine. Mary Robinson, in her 1883 biography of Emily, put it this way:
“Never was a soul with more passionate love of Mother Earth, of every weed and flower, of every bird, beast, and insect that lived.”

Her sister Charlotte wrote of Emily, that the moors “were what she lived in, and by”. Emily beautifully describes them in “High Waving Heather”, written in 1836. First verse here:
“High waving heather, ‘neath stormy blasts bending,
Midnight and moonlight and bright shining stars;
Darkness and glory rejoicingly blending,
Earth rising to heaven and heaven descending,
Man’s spirit away from its drear dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.”
Emily Bronte had the courage of her convictions. She had faith in a God who was not the construction of orthodoxy, but the God she had come to know for herself. This can be seen in her poem No Coward Soul Is Mine.
“No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven’s glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.”