Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
read more

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.

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in read more

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in my father's name;
Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.

A white rosebud for a guerdon.

A white rosebud for a guerdon.

Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in read more

Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it, what matter?

You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it, what matter?