Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.”

“Italy/Is one thing, England one.”

“I shall but love thee bitter after death”

“The widest landDoom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mineWith pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wineMust taste of its own grapes.”

“If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchangeAnd be all to me?”

“Thou comest! all is said without a word.”

“I think of thee!-my thoughts do twine and budAbout thee, as wild vines, about a tree...Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understoodI will not have my thoughts instead of theeWho art dearer, better!”

“Say over again, and yet once over again,That thou dost love me...-tollThe silver iterance!”

“The face of all the world is changed, I think,Since first I heard the footsteps of they soulMove still, oh, still, beside me...”

“Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart!Unlike our uses and our destinies...Thou, bethink thee, artA guest for queens to social pageantries,With gages from a hundred brighter eyesThan tears even can make mine...What hast though to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me,A poor, tired, wandering singer...”

“And trade is art, and art's philosophy,In Paris.”

“Men could not part us with their worldly jars,Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,--And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,We should but vow the faster for the stars.”

“The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,And placed it by thee on a golden throne,-- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)Is by thee only, whom I love alone.”

“Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.”

“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, -- he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God's future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!”

“Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeedAnd worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,Let temple burn, or flax; an equal lightLeaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:And love is fire. And when I say at needI love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sightI stand transfigured, glorified aright,With conscience of the new rays that proceedOut of my face toward thine. There's nothing lowIn love, when love the lowest: meanest creaturesWho love God, God accepts while loving so.And what I feel, across the inferior featuresOf what I am, doth flash itself, and showHow that great work of Love enhances Nature's.”

“تغير وجه العالم في ظني..منذ سمعت خطو روحك أول مرة”

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

“Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.We sit beside the headstone thus,And wish that name were carved for us.The moss reprints more tenderlyThe hard types of the mason's knife,As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's lifeWith which we're tired, my heart and I ....In this abundant earth no doubtIs little room for things worn out:Disdain them, break them, throw them by!And if before the days grew roughWe once were loved, used, - well enough,I think, we've fared, my heart and I.”

“And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.”

“If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.”

“I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.”

“And wilt thou have me fashion into speechThe love I bear thee, finding words enough,And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,Between our faces, to cast light on each? -I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teachMy hand to hold my spirits so far offFrom myself--me--that I should bring thee proofIn words, of love hid in me out of reach.Nay, let the silence of my womanhoodCommend my woman-love to thy belief, -Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,And rend the garment of my life, in brief,By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.”

“If Thou Must Love MeIf thou must love me, let it be for naughtExcept for love's sake only. Do not say,'I love her for her smile—her look—her wayOf speaking gently,—for a trick of thoughtThat falls in well with mine, and certes broughtA sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—For these things in themselves, Belovèd, mayBe changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought,May be unwrought so. Neither love me forThine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry:A creature might forget to weep, who boreThy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!But love me for love's sake, that evermoreThou mayst love on, through love's eternity.”

“She lived, we'll say,A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,A quiet life, which was not life at all(But that she had not lived enough to know)”

“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me.”

“Parting is all we know of heavenAnd all we need of hell”

“In this abundant earth no doubtIs little room for things worn out:Disdain them, break them, throw them by!And if before the days grew roughWe once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough,I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.”

“Light tomorrow with today.”

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

“O Life,How oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough,Enough of life in so much! — here's a causeFor rupture; — herein we must break with Life,Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged,Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!'— And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyesAnd think all ended. — Then, Life calls to usIn some transformed, apocryphal, new voice,Above us, or below us, or around . .Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's,Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamedTo own our compensations than our griefs:Still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life.”

“XII sang his name instead of song;Over and over I sang his name:Backward and forward I sang it along,With my sweetest notes, it was still the same!I sang it low, that the slave-girls nearMight never guess, from what they could hear,That all the song was a name.”

“OF writing many books there is no end;And I who have written much in prose and verseFor others' uses, will write now for mine,-Will write my story for my better self,As when you paint your portrait for a friend,Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at itLong after he has ceased to love you, justTo hold together what he was and is.”

“I would build a cloudy HouseFor my thoughts to live in;When for earth too fancy-looseAnd too low for Heaven!Hush! I talk my dream aloud -I build it bright to see, -I build it on the moonlit cloud,To which I looked with thee.”

“What I do, and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.”

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

“Who so loves believes the impossible.”

“You're something between a dream and a miracle.”

“I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it.”

“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”

“Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.”

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and heightMy soul can reach, when feeling out of sightFor the ends of being and ideal grace.I love thee to the level of every day'sMost quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for right.I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.I love thee with the passion put to useIn my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.I love thee with a love I seemed to loseWith my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,I shall but love thee better after death.”

“Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.”

“...But the child's sob in silence curses deeper / Than the strong man in his wrath.”

“You were made perfectly to be loved and surely I have loved you in the idea of you my whole life long. ”

“With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.”

“Di mana-mana terdapat rumput jelatang,Tapi rumput hijau yang lembut tetap lebih banyak,Kebiruan langit lebih luas daripada awan gelap.”

“Yes, I answered you last night;No, this morning, sir, I say:Colors seen by candle-lightWill not look the same by day.”

“Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?Who's sorry for a gnat... or a girl?”