Emily Brontë · 1850
No coward soul is mine
Emily Brontë · 1850
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 wither'd weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, To waken doubt in one Holding so fast by Thine infinity; So surely anchor'd 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 cease 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.
Public domain in the UK and the US · serany.app
What Serany thinks about this poem
Background
Emily Brontë wrote it in 1846, two years before she died at thirty. Charlotte printed it in 1850 and told readers her sister had written nothing after it.
Meaning
She says she isn't frightened and she isn't going to pretend otherwise. There's no room anywhere for death, because everything that exists goes on existing in God.
Who's it for
A person whose faith was entirely their own and who had no time for churches. Right for someone nobody could frighten.
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