Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

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!