Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
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'Guess now who holds thee?'-'Death,' I said. But thereThe silver answer rang-'Not Death, but Love.'
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Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low,Lest I should fear, and fall, and miss Thee so,Who art not missed by any that entreat.
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Life, struck sharp on death,Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief)'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone,And none was left to love in all the world.
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And Chaucer, with his infantineFamiliar clasp of things divine.
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Since when was genius found respectable?
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Nay, if there's room for poets in the worldA little overgrown, (I think there is)Their sole work is to represent the age,Their age, not Charlemagne's, - this live, throbbing age,That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,And spends more passion, more heroic heat,Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms,Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles.
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But so fair,She takes the breath of men awayWho gaze upon her unaware.
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She has seen the mystery hidUnder Egypt's pyramid:By those eyelids pale and closeNow she knows what Rhamses knows.
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Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself, - cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally, And build up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God.
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But since he hadThe genuis to be loved, why let him haveThe justice to be honoured in his grave.
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When our two souls stand up erect and strong,Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,Until the lengthening wings break into fireAt either curvèd point, - what bitter wrongCan the earth do to us, that we should not longBe here contented?
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Here's ivy! - take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.
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Knowledge by suffering entereth,And life is perfected by death.
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And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben,Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows whenThe world was worthy of such men.
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Every wishIs like a prayer-with God.
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Or from Browning some 'Pomegranate,' which, if cut deep down the middle,shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.
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The heart which, like a staff, was one For mine to lean and rest upon, The strongest on the longest day With steadfast love, is caught away, And yet my days go on, go on.And cold before my summer's done, And deaf in Nature's general tune, And fallen too low for special fear, And here, with hope no longer here, While the tears drop, my days go on.
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If I married him,I would not dare to call my soul my own,Which so he had bought and paid for: every thoughtAnd every heart-beat down there in the bill,–Not one found honestly deductibleFrom any use that pleased him!
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'Yes,' I answered you last night;'No,' this morning, Sir, I say.Colours seen by candlelight,Will not look the same by day.
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Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from life that disappears!
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That he, in his developed manhood, stoodA little sunburnt by the glare of life;While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me.
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The face, which, duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun, To mark all bright hours of the day With hourly love, is dimmed away - And yet my days go on, go on.
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Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
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I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.