Bronte's No Coward Soul Is Mine, And Despondency?

In Emily Bronte’s No Coward Soul Is Mine and Faith and Despondency, both poems discuss the inevitability of death but the eschatological hope that is found when one puts her trust in God. The speakers of both poems each have a different fear about their own mortality, and each poem uses different poetic devices to discuss how to overcome them. While No Coward Soul Is Mine and Faith and Despondency contain different structures and rhyme schemes, both poems suggest how faith in God mitigates one’s fears about death.
In No Coward Soul Is Mine, the speaker believes that dying should not be feared so long as one trusts in life after death. In the first stanza, the speaker observes the imminence of “Death” but is not discouraged because of her Christian faith: “I see Heaven’s glories shine/ And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear.” Because of the speaker’s eschatological “Faith”, she has the power to overcome any “Fear” …show more content…
In both poems, there are several references to stormy weather which symbolize the tribulations of life. Time is depicted as a violent sea in both poems, and faith is the only haven that can offer relief from the “world’s storm-troubled sphere”. The speaker’s faith in No Coward Soul is “so surely anchored on/The steadfast rock of Immortality” and in Faith and Despondency Irene has faith in that one must go through “Time’s wide waters o’er” to reach “the steadfast, changeless shore” of Heaven. Once the speakers of both poems have hope for a better life after death, they have the courage to undergo life’s ordeals. In No Coward Soul Is Mine, the speaker hopes to be renewed from life’s “storm-troubled sphere” in Heaven; for Irene’s father in Faith and Despondency, “the worldly tempests, raging wild/shall strengthen thy desire--/Thy fervent hope, through storm and foam/To reach, at last, the eternal