“Oh to be in England Now that April’s there.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Just for a handful of silver he left us Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Earth changes but thy soul and God stand sure.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“True knowledge comes only through suffering.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“I only thoughtOf lying quiet there where I was thrownLike sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer herTo prick me to a pattern with her pin,Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf,And dry out from my drowned anatomyThe last sea-salt left in me.”
— Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
“I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young;And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightaway I was ‘ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,–Guess now who holds thee?–Death, I said, But, there,The silver answer rang,–Not Death, but Love.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“With my lost saints – I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life! – and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“His answer was – not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of me – but simply that he loved me – he met argument with fact. He told me – that with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by, & that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman – that he loved now for the first time & the last.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me – my heart was full when you came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The heart doth recognise thee,Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,—-Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Yes,” I answered you last night;”No,” this morning, sir, I say.Colours seen by candlelightWill not look the same by day.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“And yet, because I love thee, I obtainFrom that same love this vindicating grace,To live on still in love, and yet in vain”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The wisest word man reaches is the humblest he can speak.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fineSad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?A shade, in which to sing—of palm or pine?A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“You’re something between a dream and a miracle.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,That only men incredulous of despair,Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight airBeat upward to God’s throne in loud accessOf shrieking and reproach. Full desertnessIn souls, as countries, lieth silent-bareUnder the blanching, vertical eye-glareOf the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, expressGrief for thy dead in silence like to death— Most like a monumental statue setIn everlasting watch and moveless woeTill itself crumble to the dust beneath.Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet;If it could weep, it could arise and go.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“And wilt thou have me fashion into speechThe love I bear thee, finding words enough,And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,Between our faces, to cast light on each? -I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teachMy hand to hold my spirits so far offFrom myself–me–that I should bring thee proofIn words, of love hid in me out of reach.Nay, let the silence of my womanhoodCommend my woman-love to thy belief, -Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,And rend the garment of my life, in brief,By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“The picture of helpless indolence she calls herselfsublimely helpless and impotentI had done living I thoughtWas ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there seemed no room for tears.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that tiesMy hair…now could I but unloose my soul!We are sepulchred alive in this close world,And want more room.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Quick-loving hearts … may quickly loathe.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“In this abundant earth no doubtIs little room for things worn out:Disdain them, break them, throw them by!And if before the days grew roughWe once were lov’d, us’d — well enough,I think, we’ve far’d, my heart and I.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“It is rather whenWe gloriously forget ourselves, and plungeSoul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound,Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth–‘Tis then we get the right good from a book.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Good aims not always make good books.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“We get no good by being ungenerous, even to a book, and calculating profits…so much help by so much reading. it is rather when we gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound, impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth–’tis then we get the right good from the book.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio’s stories; and I am not ashamed of it.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Better farPursue a frivolous trade by serious means,Than a sublime art frivolously.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“Our Euripides the human,With his droppings of warm tears,and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, — he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand … a simple thing,Yet I wept for it! — this, … the paper’s light …Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God’s future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine — and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this … O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning