Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

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?

How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
read more

How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures to make room for more--
Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day
before.

And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf on leaf,
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn read more

And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf on leaf,
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.

First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
read more

First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since it grew more clean and white.

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.

Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,--
And the drops will slacken so;
Weep, weep--and the watch thou read more

Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,--
And the drops will slacken so;
Weep, weep--and the watch thou keepest,
With a quicker count will go.
Think,--the shadow on the dial
For the nature most undone,
Marks the passing of the trial,
Proves the presence of the sun.

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.

I wish I were the lily's leaf
To fade upon that bosom warm,
Content to wither, pale read more

I wish I were the lily's leaf
To fade upon that bosom warm,
Content to wither, pale and brief,
The trophy of thy paler form.

That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow
But thinking of a wreath, . . .
I read more

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.