The Soul's Expression

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!
The song of soul I struggle to outwear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,-- as the thunder-roll
Braeks its own cloud,-- my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.


--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Romantic-era British poet, author, and activist, spouse of Robert Browning