Life poems
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The Seraph and Poet
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
An Apprehension
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
IF all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
For life than pity,--I should yet be slow
I
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
The Deserted Garden
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I mind me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.
Consolation
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Belov?ds, tender looks to bring
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind:
Only a Curl
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land
Unvisited over the sea,
Who tell me how lonely you stand
With a single gold curl in the hand
Held up to be looked at by me, --
A Thought For A Lonely Death-Bed
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,--
Lord Walter's Wife
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XXI
'I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week,
For the sake of . . . what is it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?
Patience Taught By Nature
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
'O DREARY life,' we cry, ' O dreary life ! '
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
The Seraph and the Poet
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Aurora Leigh (excerpts)
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[Book 1]
I am like,
They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows
Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth
De Profundis
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The face, which, duly as the sun,
Rose up for me with life begun,
To mark all bright hours of the day
With hourly love, is dimmed away
And yet my days go on, go on.
A Sea-Side Walk
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We walked beside the sea,
After a day which perished silently
Of its own glory---like the Princess weird
Who, combating the Genius, scorched and seared,
The Lady's Yes
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.
Exaggeration
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
WE overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination (given us to bring down
The choirs of singing angels overshone
By God's clear glory) down our earth to rake
Sonnet 08 - What can I give thee back, O liberal
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
What can I give thee back, O liberal
And princely giver, who hast brought the gold
And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,
And laid them on the outside of the-wall
Sonnet 24 - Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Let the world's sharpness, like a clasping knife,
Shut in upon itself and do no harm
In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm,
And let us hear no sound of human strife
Sonnet 39 - Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace
To look through and behind this mask of me
(Against which years have beat thus blanchingly
With their rains), and behold my soul's true face,
Human Lifes Mystery
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
We sow the glebe, we reap the corn,
We build the house where we may rest,
And then, at moments, suddenly,
We look up to the great wide sky,
Inquiring wherefore we were born
For earnest or for jest?
A Woman's Shortcomings
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried -
Oh, each a worthy lover!
