Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
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I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
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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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Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
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By thunders of white silence.
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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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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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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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Dreams of doing goodFor good-for-nothing people.
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Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow.
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Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.
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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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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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Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.
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The beautiful seems rightBy force of Beauty, and the feeble wrongBecause of weakness.
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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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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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What I do and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.
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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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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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God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
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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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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.'