Inner Refuge
So hopeless is the world without;
The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.
This is a section from the poem "To Imagination" by Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë) published in the book Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell by the Brontë sisters using the pseudonyms.
Charlotte Brontë gave the following account reported in the book of Elizabeth Gaskell The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857).
Averse to publicity, we veiled our own names under those of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell; the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple of assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not declare ourselves women, because—without at the time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called ‘feminine,’—we had a vague impression that authoreses are liable to be looked on with prejudice.
Such talented writers died so young. What a lost!