Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes
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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.'
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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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'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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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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I seek no copy now of life's first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future's epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!
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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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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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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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Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.
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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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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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Every wishIs like a prayer-with God.
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The beautiful seems rightBy force of Beauty, and the feeble wrongBecause of weakness.
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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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Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall standHenceforward in thy shadow.
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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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Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.
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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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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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Dreams of doing goodFor good-for-nothing people.
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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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Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.
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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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There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climbThe crowns o’ the world; oh, eyes sublimeWith tears and laughter for all time!