Finite and Infinite

Gustave Courbet - "The Wave"

Finite and Infinite

The wind sounds only in opposing straits,

The sea, beside the shore; man's spirit rends

Its quiet only up against the ends

Of wants and oppositions, loves and hates,

Where, worked and worn by passionate debates,

And losing by the loss it apprehends,

The flesh rocks round and every breath it sends

Is ravelled to a sigh. All tortured states

Suppose a straitened place. Jehovah Lord,

Make room for rest, around me! out of sight

Now float me of the vexing land abhorred,

Till in deep calms of space my soul may right

Her nature, shoot large sail on lengthening cord,

And rush exultant on the Infinite.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

“All tortured states/ suppose a straitened place.”  What a beautifully accurate image that is! The poem is so perfectly crafted, showing how the wind and water are only worked up when they have boundaries to stop them, when they are held in, pent up, limited. The way Elizabeth Browning uses the metaphor of crashing waves for her state of mind moves me. I can relate. I've lived in a "straitened place" for several years now. A place where I am continually cast up against my own limitations. There has been little room for rest or peace. I too, have been crying out to God for relief, for room, for "deep calms of space {where} my soul may right her nature". "Vexing land abhorred" ?!! She's got that right. How good it is to know others have been in this place, and felt this way, and continued on calling out to God and putting up sails.