Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browningwas one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth6 March 1806
art ascending expanding graduating hungry intense larger life line pushes spiral toward
What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?
clean hands wash
He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently; He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean
apart church close dream grave heart life press
Life treads on life, and heart on heart: We press too close in church and mart, To keep a dream or grave apart
developed seemed stood sun
He, in his developed manhood, stood A little sunburnt by the glare of life; While I, it seemed no sun had shone on me
developed scholars-and-scholarship
He, in his developed manhood, stood, a little sunburn by the glare of life.
absurd deed great hour monster
What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed -- and not for pay? Absurd -- or insincere?
flies hurt pitiful poor says tease
Hurt a fly! He would not for the world: he's pitiful to flies even. ''Sing,'' says he, ''and tease me still, if that's your way, poor insect.''
book mouse pulling ribs small victorious
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.
afloat breaking god golden great paddling ruin spreading
What was he doing, the great god Pan, / Down in the reeds by the river? / Spreading ruin and scattering ban, / Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, / And breaking the golden lilies afloat / With the dragon-fly on the river.
among beat books cases creeping felt fossils found giant high hour mouse pulling ribs secret small sun victorious
Books, books, books 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!
A woman is always younger than a man at equal years.
english-poet
He said true things, but called them by wrong names.
death god life love shall thee
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.
writing one-day three
You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.