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 fear.

These lines open Emily Brontë’s poem commonly known by its first line, “No coward soul is mine.” Brontë (1818–1848) wrote poetry throughout her short life, much of it privately, and it was published posthumously in the 1850 volume *Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey*, with a selection of poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë). The poem is often read against the backdrop of Brontë’s austere Yorkshire environment and her intense inward religious sensibility: it asserts spiritual steadfastness amid “storm-troubled” worldly conditions, and it has frequently been associated with her late-life confrontation with illness and mortality, though it is not securely dated to a specific occasion.

The speaker declares an unshakable courage rooted not in worldly security but in a direct apprehension of the divine. The “storm-troubled sphere” evokes life’s instability—social, emotional, and existential—yet the poem’s stance is defiant: fear is disarmed by a faith that “shines equal” to heaven’s “glories.” Brontë’s diction fuses Romantic sublimity (storms, spheres, shining) with a stern spiritual confidence, suggesting a personal theology in which God’s presence is immediate and sustaining rather than mediated by institutions. The opening functions as a manifesto of inner fortitude: the soul refuses cowardice because it is anchored in an eternal reality that outlasts the world’s turbulence.