# Psyche — Poetry character guide

> Psyche in Poetry by George MacDonald.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Poor Psyche, Sweet Psyche

**First appearance:** 0005-a-book-of-dreams

## Snapshot

Poor Psyche, the soul in exile, who reads the Bible with her eyes but not her heart and finds no sympathy in ancient epistles for the strife of her own age.

## Who they are

Psyche is the soul figure whose isolation the poems trace — forgotten by the hills, unrecognized by the day, moved to song only when the driving rain meets her in the darkening street. Her distinctive tension is that the old scriptures and even the gospel tale seem to belong to another world, their thoughts full of strange figures and Jewish rites, while her own struggle goes unnamed. She matters because her honest doubt — 'How find the love to pay my debt?' — becomes the crucible in which the book's faith is tested and, slowly, remade.

## In the story

### [A Story of the Sea-Shore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/a-story-of-the-sea-shore)

Referenced as a possible identity for the marble statue in the garden: 'A Psyche, or a Silence, or an Echo.'

### [My Heart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/my-heart)

Referenced as the soul whose folded wings are nurtured by the heart's chrysalis-like weaving.

### [Brother Artist!](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/brother-artist)

Referenced as the speaker's soul or beloved, envisioned as pure and white as snow, emerging from the marble of the heart.

### [The Unseen Model](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/chapters/the-unseen-model)

The idealized figure the sculptor seeks to create, but instead the clay yields the form of a betrayed girl.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters/psyche
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/poetry_8_se/characters