No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Brontë
“No Coward Soul is Mine” by Emily Bronte was first published in Poems of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell in 1846. Although the Bronte sisters had published this poetry collection in the hope of contributing to their income, the book sold only two copies at first.
Emily Brontë, published by
The Medici Society Ltd, after Patrick Branwell Brontë
collotype printed in colours, 1914 (1833) (NPG D32170)
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Creative Commons License
After Emily and Anne died and Charlotte’s novel, Jane Eyre, had become successful, Charlotte added more of her sister’s poems to the book and republished it in 1850 with much greater success.
No Coward Soul is Mine
by Emily Brontë
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 stedfast 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.
***
Emily Brontë, published by
The Medici Society Ltd, after Patrick Branwell Brontë
collotype printed in colours, 1914 (1833) (NPG D32170)
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Creative Commons License
To learn more about this author, you may wish to read a biographical sketch of Emily Brontë.
When will you read Emily Brontë’s writing in Excellence in Literature?
E4.8 Focus text: Wuthering Heights
