todays poem

I get the Writer's Almanac emailed to me every day. I love it. I send it on to my friend in Scotland who loves it and passes it on. It's a moment of sublimity. Except when it's Emily Dickinson who I really really hate (and so does my friend in Scotland...)

But I do love the Brontes. And today was a Bronte poem. So I am posting here, and then maybe in another post, I'll talk more about the Brontes, because really, what a fantastic group of liberated women for their time. Who all died of Consumption. And got more accomplished at their age than their current day counterparts.

So today's poem. in two formats - print and read aloud by a lovely Scottish actress from my old theater guild back in Glasgow. (I highly recommend checking out the rest of this blog pure dead brilliant. and cool.) Strathclyde Theatre Guild at the Ramshorn Theatre in Glasgow Scotland.

Bruce downie is the one who did the recording work, a true Jack of All Trades that one.

Radio Theatre Group: No Coward Soul is Mine. A poem by Emily Bronte. Pe...: "No Coward Soul is Mine A poem by Emily Bronte Performed by Frankie MacEachen"


No Coward Soul is Mine

by Emily Bronte

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 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 ceased to be,
And Thou wert 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.