Each creature holds an insular point in
space;
Yet what man stirs a finger, breathes
a sound,
But all the multitudinous beings round
In all the countless worlds, with time
and place
For their conditions, down to the central base,
Thrill, haply , in vibration and rebound;
Life answering life across the vast
profound,
In full antiphony, by a common grace?
I think this sudden joyaunce which
illumes
A child’s mouth sleeping, unaware may
run
From some new soul newly loosened from
earth’s tombs.
I think this passionate sigh, which
half-begun
I stifle back may reach and stir the
plumes
Of God’s calm angel standing in the sun.
From Elizabeth Barret Browning‘s Sonnets
Chris Murray 