Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my read more

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.

World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
World's cruelty is bitter bane;
But pain is not read more

World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
World's cruelty is bitter bane;
But pain is not the fruit of pain.

What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral read more

What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushed toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art's life--and where we live, we suffer and toil.

And lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to read more

And lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to lover.

"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond read more

"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.