The Soul's Expression

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.