18 No Coward Soul is Mine (1846/1926)
Emily Brontë
This version of “No Coward Soul is Mine” is based on Emily Brontë’s handwritten manuscripts, which she dated to January 2, 1846. A facsimile of her manuscript was published in Davidson Cook’s article “Emily Brontë’s Poems” in the August 1926 issue of The Nineteenth Century and After, which has been digitized from microfilm and is availble on the Internet Archive. The poem is in the public domain.
The editorial notes are available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Unless otherwise attributed, they were written by Dr. Kylee-Anne Hingston at the University of Saskatchewan.
No Coward Soul is Mine[1]
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
5
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest
As I—Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
10
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 thy infinity
15
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality.
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
20
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though Earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in Thee
25
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since Thou art Being and Breath
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.
Work Cited
Cook, Davidson. “Emily Brontë’s Poems.” The Nineteenth Century and After, vol. 100, no. 594, Constable & Company Limited, Aug. 1926, pp. 248–262. Internet Archive, 3 Mar. 2021, archive.org/details/sim_twentieth-century_1926-08_100_594/page/248/.
- This version of the poem is based on Emily’s handwritten manuscript and was first published in 1926 by Cook in the article “Emily Brontë’s Poems.” ↵
