| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Miscellaneous Sonnets.
V. Substitution | | By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) |
| | | WHEN some belovëd 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 | 5 |
| 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 | 10 |
| 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. | | | | |
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