Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

Our Balzac should be flattered beyond measure by my thinking of him at all. Which I did, but of you more.

Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them — The summer flowers depart — Sit still — as all transform'd to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, — Their presence may be o'er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh'd our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
Look out o'er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them — The sky is round them still.
Come autumn's scathe — come winter's cold — Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne'er be desolate.

A mirror may be held in different lights by different hands; and, according to the position of those hands, will the light fall.

I shall but love thee bitter after death

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers,
And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face,
A gauntlet with a gift in't.

Our Euripides the human,
With his droppings of warm tears,
and his touchings of things common
Till they rose to meet the spheres.

All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes.

I praise Thee while my days go on; I love Thee while my days go on: Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank Thee while my days go on. And having in thy life-depth thrown Being and suffering (which are one), As a child drops his pebble small Down some deep well, and hears it fall Smiling — so I. THY DAYS GO ON.

I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.

"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death," I said. But there
The silver answer rang—"Not Death, but Love."

Will that light come again,
As now these tears come...falling hot and real!