Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“ Getting, so, by heart, your beauty, which all others must adore,—
While you draw the golden ringlets down your fingers, to vow gaily,. .
You will wed no man that's only good to God,—and nothing more.
"Why, what right have you, made fair by that same God—the sweetest woman
Of all women He has fashioned—with your lovely spirit-face,
Which would seem too near to vanish, if its smile were not so human,—
And your voice of holy sweetness, turning common words to grace:
"What right can you have, God's other works, to scorn, despise,. ”

“ So asleep, she is forgetting to say Hush!—a fancy quaint.
"Mark how heavy white her eyelids I not a dream between them lingers!
And the left hand's index droppeth from the lips upon the cheek:
And the right hand,—with the symbol rose held slack within the fingers,—
Has fallen backward in the basin—yet this Silence will not speak!
"That the essential meaning growing, may exceed the special symbol,
Is the thought, as I conceive it: it applies more high and low,—
Your true noblemen will often, through right nobleness, grow humble,
And assert an inward honour, by denying outward show." ”

“ So to mark upon the blasted heaven, the measure of her land.
There are none of England’s daughters, who can show a prouder presence;
Upon princely suitors suing, she has looked in her disdain:
She was sprung of English nobles, I was born of English peasants;
What was I that I should love her—save for feeling of the pain!
I was only a poor poet, made for singing at her casement,
As the finches or the thrushes, while she thought of other things. ”

“ To make front against this anguish in the far and foreign lands.
Blame me not, I would not squander life in grief — I am abstemious ;
I but nurse my spirit's falcon, that its wing may soar again!
There 's no room for tears of weakness, in the blind eyes of a Phemius :
Into work the poet kneads them, — and he does not die till then. ”

“ Worked his pride up to the surface, for she answered in slow scorn—
"And your lordship judges rightly. Whom I marry, shall be noble,
Ay, and wealthy. I shall never blush to think how he was born."
There, I maddened! her words stung me! Life swept through me into fever,
And my soul sprang up astonished; sprang, full-statured in an hour!
Know you what it is when anguish, with apocalyptic never,
To a Pythian height dilates you,—and despair sublimes to power? ”

“ Having ended, he leans backward in his chair, with lips that quiver
From the deep unspoken, ay, and deep unwritten thoughts of grief.
Soh! how still the lady standeth! 'tis a dream—a dream of mercies! ”

“ More distinction than these gentlemen think worthy of my claim.
"Ne'ertheless, you see, I seek it—not because I am a woman,"—
(Here her smile sprang like a fountain, and, so, overflowed her mouth)
"But because my woods in Sussex have some purple shades at gloaming,
Which are worthy of a king in state, or poet in his youth.
"I invite you, Mr. Bertram, to no hive for worldly speeches—
Sir, I scarce should dare—but only where God asked the thrushes first—
And if you will sing beside them, in the covert of my beeches,
I will thank you for the woodlands, . . . ”

“ Little thinking if we work our souls as nobly as our iron,—
Or if angels will commend us, at the goal of pilgrimage.
"Why, what is this patient entrance into nature's deep resources,
But the child's most gradual learning to walk straightly without bane—?
When we drive out, from the cloud of steam, majestical white horses,
Are we greater than the first men, who led black ones by the mane?
"If we sided with the eagles, if we struck the stars in rising. ”

“ And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly freighted
All the air about the windows, with elastic laughters sweet.
For at eve, the open windows flung their light out on the terrace,
Which the floating orbs of curtains, did with gradual shadow sweep;
While the swans upon the river, fed at morning by the heiress. ”

“ Are cast out of love and reverence, because chancing not to hold.
"For myself I do not argue," said I, "though I love you, Madam,
But for better souls, that nearer to the height of yours have trod—
And this age shows, to my thinking, still more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels to God. ”

“ Won the secret of a happy dream, she did not care to speak. ”

“ A poet writes to his friend.Place—a room in Wycombe Hall.
Time—Late in the evening.
Dear my friend and fellow-student, I would lean my spirit o'er you:
Down the purple of this chamber, tears should scarcely run at will:
I am humbled who was humble! Friend,—I bow my head before you!
You should lead me to my peasants!—but their faces are too still.
There's a lady,—an earl's daughter; she is proud and she is noble
And she treads the crimson carpet, and she breathes the perfumed air ”

“ And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear! ”

“ Of thy loving, for I love thee! ”

“ And this morning, as I sat alone within the inner chamber
With the great saloon beyond it, lost in pleasant thought serene—
For I had been reading Camoëns—that poem you remember.
Which his lady's eyes are praised in, as the sweetest ever seen. ”