| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | I. Expressionless | | By 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 | 5 |
| 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, | 10 |
| 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! | | | | |
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