Emily Brontë's Poetic Techniques: Form, Diction, and Tone

Introduction: When Poetic Elements Combine

Single elements of poetry — such as form, diction, and syntax — can have powerful effects on the tone of a poem. However, it is when these elements are used in combination that the tone becomes synergistic, and a single idea can be reinforced. Emily Brontë's poems The Prisoner and No Coward Soul Is Mine use a combination of techniques to create a sense of enclosure.

Consistency of Form as Enclosure

The most evident technique Brontë uses is consistency of form. Just as gray mortar is indistinguishable from wall to wall and iron bars march in uniform single-file lines, Brontë's stanzas are almost invariably consistent.

No Coward Soul Is Mine consists of seven stanzas: the first line of each stanza is iambic trimeter; the second and fourth lines are in iambic pentameter. The third lines of each stanza vary slightly — most are trochaic trimeter, but the first stanza contains an abbreviated line of trochaic hexameter, as does the last stanza. Even this differentiation has a predictable symmetry, and without detracting from the consistency of form, it marks the beginning and end as significant.

No Coward Soul Is Mine (Emily Brontë)

01 No coward soul is mine,
02 No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
03 I see Heaven's glories shine,
04 And Faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

05 O God within my breast,
06 Almighty, ever-present Deity!
07 Life, that in me has rest,
08 As I, undying Life, have power in Thee!

09 Vain are the thousand creeds
10 That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
11 Worthless as withered weeds,
12 Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,
13 To waken doubt in one
14 Holding so fast by Thy infinity,
15 So surely anchored on
16 The steadfast rock of Immortality.

17 With wide-embracing love
18 Thy Spirit animates eternal years,
19 Pervades and broods above,
20 Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

21 Though earth and moon were gone,
22 And suns and universes ceased to be,
23 And Thou wert left alone,
24 Every existence would exist in Thee.

25 There is not room for Death,
26 Nor atom that his might could render void:
27 Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
28 And what Thou art may never be destroyed.

The Prisoner (Emily Brontë)

01 In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray,
02 Reckless of the lives wasting there away;

03 "Draw the ponderous bars! Open, Warder stern!"
04 He dared not say me nay — the hinges harshly turn.

05 "Our guests are darkly lodged," I whispered, gazing through
06 The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more gray than blue;
07 (This was when glad Spring laughed in awaking pride;)
08 "Ay, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide.

09 Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue;
10 I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung:
11 "Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
12 That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?"

13 The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild
14 As sculptured marble saint, or slumbering unweanèd child;
15 It was so soft and mild, it was so sweet and fair,
16 Pain could not trace a line, nor grief a shadow there!

17 The captive raised her hand and pressed it to her brow;
18 "I have been struck," she said, "and I am suffering now;
19 Yet these are little worth, your bolts and irons strong;
20 And, were they forged in steel, they could not hold me long."

21 Hoarse laughed the jailor grim: "Shall I be won to hear;
22 Dost think, fond, dreaming wretch, that I shall grant thy prayer?
23 Or, better still, wilt melt my master's heart with groans?
24 Ah! sooner might the sun thaw down these granite stones.

25 "My master's voice is low, his aspect bland and kind,
26 But hard as hardest flint the soul that lurks behind;
27 And I am rough and rude, yet not more rough to see
28 Than is the hidden ghost that has its home in me."

29 About her lips there played a smile of almost scorn,
30 "My friend," she gently said, "you have not heard me mourn;
31 When you my kindred's lives, MY lost life, can restore,
32 Then may I weep and sue — but never, friend, before!

33 "Still, let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
34 Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
35 A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
36 And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

37 "He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
38 With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.
39 Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
40 And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

41 "Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
42 When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.
43 When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm,
44 I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

45 "But, first, a hush of peace — a soundless calm descends;
46 The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;
47 Mute music soothes my breast — unuttered harmony,
48 That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

49 "Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
50 My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:
51 Its wings are almost free — its home, its harbor found,
52 Measuring the gulf, it stoops and dares the final bound.

53 "Oh! dreadful is the check — intense the agony
54 When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
55 When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;
56 The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

57 "Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
58 The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
59 And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
60 If it but herald death, the vision is divine!"

61 She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering, turned to go —
62 We had no further power to work the captive woe:
63 Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had given
64 A sentence, unapproved, and overruled by Heaven.