The Full Text of “No Coward Soul is Mine”
1No coward soul is mine
2No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
3I see Heaven's glories shine
4And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
5O God within my breast
6Almighty ever-present Deity
7Life, that in me hast rest,
8As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
9Vain are the thousand creeds
10That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
11Worthless as withered weeds
12Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
13To waken doubt in one
14Holding so fast by thy infinity,
15So surely anchored on
16The steadfast rock of Immortality.
17With wide-embracing love
18Thy spirit animates eternal years
19Pervades and broods above,
20Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
21Though earth and moon were gone
22And suns and universes ceased to be
23And Thou wert left alone
24Every Existence would exist in thee
25There is not room for Death
26Nor atom that his might could render void
27Since thou art Being and Breath
28And what thou art may never be destroyed.
The Full Text of “No Coward Soul is Mine”
1No coward soul is mine
2No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
3I see Heaven's glories shine
4And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
5O God within my breast
6Almighty ever-present Deity
7Life, that in me hast rest,
8As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
9Vain are the thousand creeds
10That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
11Worthless as withered weeds
12Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
13To waken doubt in one
14Holding so fast by thy infinity,
15So surely anchored on
16The steadfast rock of Immortality.
17With wide-embracing love
18Thy spirit animates eternal years
19Pervades and broods above,
20Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
21Though earth and moon were gone
22And suns and universes ceased to be
23And Thou wert left alone
24Every Existence would exist in thee
25There is not room for Death
26Nor atom that his might could render void
27Since thou art Being and Breath
28And what thou art may never be destroyed.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Introduction
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Emily Brontë first published "No Coward Soul Is Mine" in 1846 as part of the collection Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell (Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell being pseudonyms for Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë, respectively). The poem is a meditation on the power of faith: in it, the speaker describes their unshakeable belief in a divine power so all-encompassing that it includes the speaker too. In this way, the speaker feels fortified against any trials or tribulations that life—or death—may throw their way, because nothing can compare to the vastness of this eternal life source.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Summary
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My soul is no coward. It doesn't quiver with fear in the face of all the stormy troubles of world. My faith glows just as brightly as the wonders of Heaven and shields me against fear.
Oh, God, who is inside my heart: you are a supreme, all-powerful being who is always there. The life you created is welcomed in me, and I have immortality through you.
The countless religions that drive other people are completely, utterly ineffective, worth no more than dried-up weeds or the most frivolous seafoam in the middle of the vast, open ocean.
Those other beliefs have no power to whip up doubt in someone with such steady faith in your endless existence, who is so tightly fastened to your unmoving stone of everlasting life.
With all-encompassing love, your essence is what fills everything with endless life. It feels the sky above and hangs over the world, shaping, destroying, and nurturing everything below.
Even if the earth and the moon were to disappear, and all the stars and galaxies were to blink out of existence, and you were left by yourself: even then, everything that has ever existed would continue to live within you.
There is no space for death, no particle that death's strength could dissolve, because you are the vital force of life, and what you are can never be destroyed.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Themes
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The Power of Faith
The speaker of “No Coward Soul Is Mine” expresses an unshakeable belief in the strength and goodness of God, that “ever-present Deity.” Despite living in a world of suffering and loss, the speaker sees no reason to despair: a deep faith in God assures the speaker that all life is everlasting and that death has no real power. Holding this kind of rock-solid faith, this poem suggests, allows one to have courage in the face of even the most terrible trials.
The speaker sees God as both all-powerful and always around. The speaker says that God “animates eternal years” (that is, gives life to eternity) and is “the steadfast rock of immortality.” In other words, God will never ever die, and thus will always be creating things and imbuing them with strength and power.
Not only is God all-powerful, this speaker argues: God, in fact, lives within the speaker—right within the speaker's “breast” (or heart). God’s boundless power is thus always accessible to the speaker. And because of this, the speaker feels that they, too, are a form of “Undying life,” and that they “have power in [God].” In other words, God’s constant presence means that the speaker is never alone nor vulnerable.
Unshakably convinced that this almighty God is always there for guidance and protection, the speaker feels safe from all the dangers of the world. The speaker isn’t worried about any of the world’s many “creeds” (or systems of belief) “waken[ing] doubt” in God. The speaker is simply too convinced of God’s “wide-embracing love” to be shaken by merely human ideas about what God might be like: the speaker's relationship with God is too personal for that!
That confidence isn’t just about the speaker’s own relationship with God, but about God’s relationship with everything. In fact, the speaker says, even if the “earth and moon were gone / And suns and universes ceased to be,” all of these things would somehow continue to exist as part of God’s very being. And since God “may never be destroyed,” death cannot “render void” (or annihilate) anything. Basically, the speaker sees God as a giant, protective bubble inside of which everything, including the speaker, is safe from lasting harm.
A faith like this, the speaker suggests, keeps one from being a “coward”: belief in God lends the speaker a kind of holy courage. Despite the “storm-troubled” world that the speaker lives in, the speaker is “No trembler.” In other words, the speaker isn’t afraid even in difficult times; faith in God “arm[s]” (or steels and fortifies) the speaker against fear. Feeling “God within [their] breast” gives the speaker a sense of power. Knowing that God made the speaker, and that the speaker is therefore part of God, assures the speaker that they, too, are a part of “Undying life.” The speaker’s unshakeable faith thus means that not even death seems frightening.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “No Coward Soul is Mine”
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Lines 1-4
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 FearThe speaker opens the poem with a strong, insistent statement:
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphereBy beginning with anaphora (in bold above), the poem draws attention to the speaker's defiance. No matter how stormy the world's woes, the speaker feels confident that they aren't going to be caught quivering in fear. That's because the speaker's eyes are fixed on "Heaven's glories": the wonder, majesty, and power of God.
In fact, the speaker's own "Faith shines" just as brightly as those heavenly "glories," and in shining so brightly this faith becomes a kind of shield or weapon that the speaker can use to fight off earthly troubles (it "arm[s]" the speaker against "Fear").
The diacope in lines 3-4 emphasizes just how strong the speaker's faith is:
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from FearThe repetition of "shine"/"shines" (as well as the use of the word "equal") creates a kind of reciprocal relationship between "Heaven's glories" and the speaker's own "Faith"; looking upon Heaven fills the speaker with a sense of power.
Notice how alliteration pumps up the intensity of these opening lines. The /s/ and /t/ sounds of line 2 ("trembler," "storm-troubled," "sphere") elevates the speaker's language and, in doing so, emphasizes just how "troubled" the earthly world can be. Then, in line 4, the shared /f/ sounds of "Faith" and "Fear" underscores the thematic relationship between these words—the idea that "Faith" is a kind of armor against "Fear."
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Lines 5-8
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee -
Lines 9-12
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main -
Lines 13-16
To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality. -
Lines 17-20
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears -
Lines 21-24
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee -
Lines 25-28
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
Anaphora appears in the first two lines of the poem, where the speaker repeats the word "No":
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphereThis anaphora kickstarts the poem, making its opening sound all the more insistent and defiant. Repeating that "no" up top underscores the idea that the speaker's faith helps them stare down every obstacle that life might throw their way. Consider how different these lines would feel if the poet had written:
My soul is no coward
I am no trembler [...]The poem would lose some of its emphatic urgency by moving that "no" later in the lines. As it stands, the poem starts off on a bold note that reflects the speaker's refusal to give in to fear.
The poem also uses anaphora in lines 22-23, with the repetition of the word "And." Once again, anaphora creates a sense of steady, building rhythm and momentum as the speaker imagines the end of all "universes."
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Repetition
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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"No Coward Soul is Mine" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Deity
- Hast
- Thee
- Thee
- Vain
- Creeds
- Unutterably
- Idlest
- Froth
- Boundless main
- Thy
- Animates
- Pervades
- Broods
- Thou
- Wert
- Render
- Void
- Art
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God.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “No Coward Soul is Mine”
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Form
The poem is made up of seven quatrains, or four-line stanzas. This steadiness of these stanzas, with their regular meter and rhyme, makes the poem feel predictable, confident, and sure-footed. The poem's form thus reflects the speaker's steadfast faith: the poem's form is as constant and unshakable as the speaker's belief in a vast, all-knowing, and "ever-present Deity."
It's also worth noting that the poem is quite sparing in its use of punctuation. Many lines are enjambed, which allows the poem to flow smoothly down the page even as its form remains quite strict.
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Meter
The poem is written in alternating lines of iambic trimeter and pentameter. Odd-numbered lines contain three iambs, poetic feet that follow a da-DUM syllable pattern. Take line 21, for example:
Though earth | and moon | were gone
Even-numbered lines, meanwhile, have five iambs. That means they have the same da-DUM rhythm as the odd-numbered lines, but four more syllables (remember that each iamb consists of two syllables, and there are two more iambs here). As an example, here's line 22:
And suns | and u- | nivers- | es ceased | to be
There are many moments in the poem when the speaker diverges from this pattern for emphasis, however. Take line 2, which might be scanned as follows:
No tremb- | ler in | the world's | storm-troub- | led sphere
The fourth foot here is a spondee, meaning there are two strong beats in a row ("storm troub-"). Combined with the iamb before it, there are actually three stressed beats in a row! As a result, the troubles of the world stand out to the reader's ear. The forcefulness of the phrase reflects the power of those troubles. (Some readers might heat a stressed beat on that initial "No" as well!)
The speaker also often starts lines with stressed beats, adding a bit of oomph to the verse. Take line 7:
Life, that | in me | hast rest
And line 9:
Vain are | the thou- | sand creeds
Both lines begin with trochees, feet that go DA-dum, before falling back into steady iambs. Such moments add interest and intensity to the poem without totally diverging from its steady beat.
The poem's meter defies expectations in a more subtle way as well. While common meter was often used for hymns and ballads, and would perhaps have been an obvious choice for a poem about God, the meter here is almost the opposite of common meter: common meter uses longer lines of tetrameter (lines with four feet) followed by shorter lines of trimeter (again, lines with three feet), but this poem starts with shorter trimeter lines and follows them up with longer ones (in this case pentameter).
The effect is striking: short, declarative lines, such as line 1 ("No coward soul is mine") are followed by longer, more expansive lines that seem to explain or build on the preceding statements ("No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere"). By starting with more declarative lines and then extrapolating, the poem takes on an assured, confident tone—fitting for a poem about the power of unshakeable faith.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows a strict ABAB rhyme scheme in each stanza. That means that the first and third lines of each stanza rhyme with each other, as do the second and fourth.
On one level, the steady rhyme scheme simply adds to the poem's confident, assured tone: the predictable pattern of rhyme reflects the speaker's unwavering faith in God.
More subtly, the back-and-forth nature of the rhyme scheme might evoke the speaker's relationship to God; God doesn't just exist above or around the speaker, but inside of and through the speaker as well. In other words, the line between God and God's creations isn't hard and defined, but instead is porous, a kind of exchange between creator and created.
And although Brontë chose not to use common meter (which was used for church hymns and a lot of religious poems), it's worth noting that the rhyme scheme is the one generally associated with church music. So even though the poem defies some expectations that Victorian readers might have had, the rhyme scheme still evokes the sense of reverence that a hymn might. This may not be a conventional Victorian poem about God, but it is still a poem about God written during Victorian times.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Speaker
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It's possible to read the poem's speaker as being Emily Brontë herself, and the poem as thus expressing her personal beliefs about God. That said, the speaker remains anonymous throughout the poem; there are no indications of this person's age, gender, occupation, etc. The poem focuses entirely on the speaker's faith rather than their identity. This makes sense, given that the speaker believes that "Every Existence" exists within God—that everything that ever was is a part of God. God, in other words, is who matters here.
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“No Coward Soul is Mine” Setting
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The poem doesn't have a specific setting. It's about the speaker's faith, which isn't tied to a certain time or place. The closest thing to a physical setting in this poem is the speaker's description of the "storm-troubled sphere" on which they live (i.e., the earth). In other words, the world is a difficult place.
The lack of setting here reflects the speaker's belief that God encompasses the entire world; that God's "wide-embracing love" permeates everything that is or ever was. The speaker is so certain of God's infinitude that they go so far as to imagine a future in which the "earth and moon [are] gone" and "suns and universes cease[] to be." Even in this difficult-to-imagine future where everything the speaker has ever known is utterly unrecognizable, the speaker is certain that none of these things would really be gone—they would continue to "exist in [God]." In other words, God contains everything that's ever been or ever will be.
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Literary and Historical Context of “No Coward Soul is Mine”
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Literary Context
Emily Brontë published “No Coward Soul Is Mine” in 1846. The poem appeared in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, these names being male pseudonyms for Emily and her sisters Charlotte and Anne.
The collection was assembled after Charlotte Brontë discovered a manuscript of poems Emily had been working on in secret. Emily eventually agreed to release the poems in the hope that their publication would earn the sisters some much-needed money. Unfortunately, the original edition only sold two copies, and despite sending it out to prominent poets of the time, the sisters failed to drum up much interest. The little commentary it did obtain, however, was particularly favorable towards the poems written by “Ellis”—a.k.a. Emily. These were the only poems she published before her death (although nearly 200 other poems would be later discovered).
Only a year after the disappointing reception to Poems, Brontë went on to publish her now-acclaimed novel Wuthering Heights. Both her poetry and her novel stood out amidst the prim, proper, and pious attitudes of Victorian society. The intense emotiveness of her work, as well as her preoccupations with love, nature, the imagination, and death, linked Brontë more to the earlier Romantic poets (such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) and to Gothic writers.
Her other poems touch on themes similar to those found here: in “A Day Dream,” for example, a dejected speaker is comforted by joyous spirits of nature who argue that life is only a kind of prelude to death, and that death is therefore not something to be feared. “A Day Dream,” like “No Coward Soul Is Mine,” also speaks to the “perva[sive]” nature of God as the speaker says, “Methought, the very breath I breathed / Was full of sparks divine.”
Historical Context
Brontë was born in Yorkshire, England, in 1818. Her father, Patrick, was an ordained priest for the Church of England, and both her parents were writers. Brontë admired her diligent and pious father even while developing a rather nonconformist and individual relationship to God. Like the speaker of this poem, who can be read as a representation of Brontë herself, she was uninterested in the “creeds,” or religious doctrines, that dominated much of Victorian life, and rarely attended church services.
The world in which Brontë lived and wrote could easily be described as the “storm-troubled sphere” that the speaker references in this poem. Queen Victoria came to power in England in 1837, right around the time that Brontë’s earliest poems are dated. The Victorian era was a time of intense transformation in British life, thanks in large part to the industrialization of society and the subsequent growth of the middle class. For someone who found solace, inspiration, and a relationship to God through nature, the massive shift from country to city life likely represented an unwelcome and uncertain future, perhaps prompting Brontë to consider a time when "suns and universes" would "cease[] to be."
The Victorian era was also a time of religious upheaval, with various forms of Christianity battling amongst each other and against a rise in secularism. This poem's focus on the speaker's individual, unshakable faith can be read as a response to the many swirling "creeds" of Brontë's day.
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More “No Coward Soul is Mine” Resources
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External Resources
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Emily Brontë's Life and Work — Learn more about the poet via the Poetry Foundation.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to the poem read aloud and accompanied by music.
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Handwritten Poems — Browse the British Library's archives of Brontë's poetry notebook.
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Victorian Poetry — A look at the era in which Brontë wrote.
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"A fierce, elemental lyric" — Read a discussion of "No Coward Soul is Mine" written for The Guardian's Poem of the Week series, which deems the poet "a very un-Victorian Victorian."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Emily Bronte
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