Smile poems
/ page 353 of 369 /
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,--
Aurora Leigh (excerpts)
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[Book 1]
I am like,
They tell me, my dear father. Broader brows
Howbeit, upon a slenderer undergrowth
Sonnet 40 - Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth.
I have heard love talked in my early youth,
And since, not so long back but that the flowers
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!
Sonnet 34 - With the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
With the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee
As those, when thou shalt call me by my name
Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same,
Perplexed and ruffled by life's strategy?
Mother and Poet
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Dead ! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead ! both my boys ! When you sit at the feast
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at me !
The Autumn
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
A Child Asleep
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I.
I stand on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee,
Where exile turned to ancestor,
Sonnet 09 - Can it be right to give what I can give?
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
A Year's Spinning
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1
He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
While through the door he brought the sun:
But now my spinning is all done.
The Cry Of The Children
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And that cannot stop their tears.
Sonnet 14 - If thou must love me, let it be for nought
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smileher lookher way
Of speaking gently,for a trick of thought
Sonnet 43 - How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
© Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
To Gnedich
© Alexander Pushkin
With Homer you conversed alone for days and nights,
Our waiting hours were passing slowly,
And shining you came down from the mysterious heights
And brought to us your tablets holy -
The Water-Nymph
© Alexander Pushkin
Translated by: Genia Gurarie, summer of 1995
Copyright retained by Genia Gurarie.
email: egurarie@princeton.edu
http://www.princeton.edu/~egurarie/
For permission to reproduce, write personally to the translator.
The Singer
© Alexander Pushkin
Did you attend? He sang by grove ripe -
The bard of love, the singer of his mourning.
When fields were silent by the early morning,
To sad and simple sounds of a pipe
Did you attend?
The Night
© Alexander Pushkin
My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,
Disturbs the velvet of the dark night's mantle,
By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,
Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood --
Muse
© Alexander Pushkin
In my youth's years, she loved me, I am sure.
The flute of seven pipes she gave in my tenure
And harked to me with smile -- without speed,
Along the ringing holes of the reed,
