High waving heather, beneath 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 deep dungeon sending,
Bursting the fetters and breaking the bars.

All down the mountain sides, wild forests lending
One mighty voice to the lifegiving wind;
Rivers their banks in the jubilee rending,
Fast thru the valleys a reckless course wending,
Wider and deeper their valleys extending,
Leaving a desolate desert behind.

Shining and lowering and swelling and dying
Changing forever from midnight to noon;
Roaring like thunder like soft music sighing,
Shadows on shadows advancing and flying,
Lightning-bright flashes the deep gloom defying,
Coming as swiftly and fading as soon.

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Note: in the Fisk work, this is sung by Heathcliff

Text Authorship:

• by Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848), appears in Poems by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë Now for the First Time Printed, first published 1902 [author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):

• by John Woods Duke (1899 - 1984), "On the moors", 1970, published 1977 [ mezzo-soprano and piano ], from Six Songs on Poems by Emily Brontë, no. 4, Southern/NY [sung text not yet checked]
• by Terry Fisk , "High waving heather, beneath stormy blasts bending", published 2002 [ voice, piano ], from Wuthering Heights, no. 42 [sung text checked 1 time]
• by John Pierre Herman Joubert (1927 - 2019), "Storm", published 1971 [ high voice and piano ], from Six Poems of Emily Brontë [sung text not yet checked]
• by Joan Littlejohn (b. 1937), "High waving heather, 'neath stormy blasts bending", 1967-71, first performed 1972 [ mezzo-soprano and piano ], from The Heights of Haworth [sung text not yet checked]
• by John Mitchell (b. 1941), "Celebration", op. 24 no. 5 (1977), from The Earth, the Wind, and the Sky, no. 5 [sung text checked 1 time]

Researcher for this page: Victoria Brago

This text was added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.
Line count: 18
Word count: 121