The Soul's Expression

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 (Kelloe) – 1861 (Florence)



WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,--as the thunder-roll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

31 sec read
224

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABCADEDEDE
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 577
Words 106
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. more…

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