Elizabeth Barrett Browning

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
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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.

The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to read more

The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

The devil's most devilish when respectable.

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
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Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man.
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain--
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.

Yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy!--take them as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where read more

Yet here's eglantine,
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.