Audio recording (download wav.file)

  (courtesy Rothe Technologies, Inc.)

 

Emily Brontė (1818-1848):

 

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 has 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 thine 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 man were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

    And Thou were left alone,

Every existence would exist in Thee.

 

    There is not room for Death

Nor atom that his might could render void:

    Thou--THOU art Being and Breath,

And what THOU art may never be destroyed.

 

*These are the last lines that Emily Brontė ever wrote,

according to Charlotte Brontė;

Arthur C. Benson, ed., Brontė Poems, Selections from the

Poetry of Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Brontė

(New York and London: The Knickerbocker Press, 1915) 279.