Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On 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!Collection: Dream
This race is never grateful: from the first, One fills their cup at supper with pure wine, Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge, In bitter vinegar.Collection: Gratitude
Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning.Collection: Lightning
Thou large-brain'd woman and large-hearted man.Collection: Women
The least flower, with brimming cup, may stand and share its dew drop with another near.Collection: Flower
Books are men of higher stature, and the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear.Collection: Book
The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!Collection: Sweet
So mothers have God's license to be missed.Collection: Mother
She has seen the mystery hid Under Egypt's pyramid: By those eyelids pale and close Now she knows what Rhamses knows.Collection: Egypt
There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o' the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!Collection: Time
May the good God pardon all good men.Collection: Men
Life treads on life, and heart on heart; We press too close in church and mart To keep a dream or grave apart.Collection: Dream
Capacity for joy Admits temptation.Collection: Joy
For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.Collection: Democracy
The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise, I barter for curl upon that mart.Collection: Business
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 a book.Collection: Book
For frequent tears have run; The colours from my life.Collection: Running
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which if cut deep down the middle Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.Collection: Heart
A grave, on which to rest from singing?Collection: Singing
And lips say “God be pitiful,” Who ne'er said “God be praised.”Collection: God
O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief--holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good.Collection: Brother
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow But thinking of a wreath, . . . I like such ivy; bold to leap a height 'Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too (And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.Collection: Strong
The critics could never mortify me out of heart - because I love poetry for its own sake, - and, tho' with no stoicism and some ambition, care more for my poems than for my poetic reputation.Collection: Heart
Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together!Collection: Criticism
I worked with patience which means almost power.Collection: Patience
I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.Collection: Thinking
And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The 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 teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend 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.Collection: Fashion
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.Collection: Music
His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears.Collection: Animal
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vainCollection: Grace
Too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.Collection: Beauty
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.Collection: Lilies
Whoso loves, believes in the impossibleCollection: Love
A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it, -- prate of woman's rights, of woman's mission, woman's function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, A woman's function plainly is... to talk. Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!Collection: Art
The world's male chivalry has perished out, but women are knights-errant to the last; and, if Cervantes had been greater still, he had made his Don a Donna.Collection: Courage
Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.Collection: Sweet
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness; Round our restlessness, His rest.Collection: Greatness
Children use the fist until they are of age to use the brain.Collection: Children
If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me?Collection: Thee
I should not dare to call my soul my own.Collection: Freedom
Where Christ brings His cross He brings His presence; and where He is none are desolate, and there is no room for despair.Collection: Despair
When the dust of death has choked a great man's voice, the common words he said turn oracles, the common thoughts he yoked like horses draw like griffins.Collection: Death
truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.Collection: Truth
I heard an angel speak last night/And he said, "Write!"Collection: Angel
I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle light...I love thee with the breath,smiles,t ears,of all my life.Collection: Light
If we tried To sink the past beneath our feet, be sure The future would not stand.Collection: Past