Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Miscellaneous Sonnets. V. SubstitutionElizabeth Barrett Browning (18061861)
W
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new—
What hope? what help? what music will undo
That silence to your sense? Not friendship’s sigh,
Not reason’s subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress-trees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Self-chanted, nor the angels’ sweet All hails,
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak