Substitution

I hope you all never tire of reading Mrs. Browning's poetry.  I continue to share her poems because  they are both beautiful and soul-stirring...and because I hope that even one of you might fall in love with her work, as I have!

Substitution

by: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When some beloved voice that was to you

Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,

And silence, against which you dare not cry,

Aches round you like a strong disease and new-

What hope?  What help?  What music will undo

That silence to your sense?  Not friendship's sigh,

Not reason's subtle count; not melody

Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;

Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales

Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress trees

To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws

Self-chanted, nor the angels' sweet "All hails,"

Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.

Speak THOU, availing Christ! - and fill this pause.