Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
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Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,Ere the sorrow comes with years?They are leaning their young heads against their mothers-And that cannot stop their tears.
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By thunders of white silence.
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I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
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What was he doing, the great god Pan,Down in the reeds by the river?Spreading ruin and scattering ban,Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,And breaking the golden lilies afloatWith the dragon-fly on the river.
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Whatever's lost, it first was won; We will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on.
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Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.
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Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow.
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And that dismal cry rose slowly And sank slowly through the air,Full of spirit's melancholy And eternity's despair;And they heard the words it said,-'Pan is dead! great Pan is dead! Pan, Pan is dead!'
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Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.
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Dreams of doing goodFor good-for-nothing people.
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God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,A gauntlet with a gift in't.
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The beautiful seems rightBy force of Beauty, and the feeble wrongBecause of weakness.
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The cypress stood up like a churchThat night we felt our love would hold,And saintly moonlight seemed to searchAnd wash the whole world clean as gold;The olives crystallized the vales'Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:The fireflies and the nightingalesThrobbed each to either, flame and song.The nightingales, the nightingales.
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Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.
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Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief misery, The sharp regalia are for Thee Whose days eternally go on!'For us, - whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, willest what is done, Grief may be joy misunderstood; Only the Good discerns the good. I trust Thee while my days go on.
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Of writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,-Will write my story for my better self,As when you paint your portrait for a friend,Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at itLong after he has ceased to love you, justTo hold together what he was and is.
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And I said in underbreath -All our life is mixed with death, -And who knoweth which is best?And I smiled to think God's greatnessFlowed around our incompleteness, - Round our restlessness, His rest.
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Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.
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Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof.
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What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
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God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
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Unless you can muse in a crowd all dayOn the absent face that fixed you;Unless you can love, as the angels may,With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,Through behoving and unbehoving;Unless you can die when the dream is past -Oh, never call it loving!
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By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear Him charge his saints that none Among his creatures anywhere Blaspheme against Him with despair, However darkly days go on.
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I cannot speak In happy tones; the tear drops on my cheek Show I am sad;But I can speak Of grace to suffer with submission meek,Until made glad.I cannot feelThat all is well, when dark'ning clouds concealThe shining sun;But then I knowGod lives and loves; and say, since it is so, 'Thy will be done.'