Quotes from browning elizabeth barrett ii

The great chasm between the thing I say, and the thing I would say, would be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

Anybody is qualified, according to everybody, for giving opinions upon poetry. It is not so in chemistry and mathematics. Nor is it so, I believe, in whist and the polka. But then these are more serious things.

Utterance is the evidence of foregone study.

Nay, if there's room for poets in the world A little overgrown, (I think there is) Their sole work is to represent the age, Their age, not Charlemagne's, -- this live, throbbing age, That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, And spends more passion, more heroic heat, Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles

The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.

Is it true that your wishes fulfil themselves? And when they do, are they not bitter to your taste--do you not wish them unfulfilled? Oh, this life, this life! There is comfort in it, they say, and I almost believe--but the brightest place in the house, is the leaning out of the window--at least, for me.

Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.

Souls were dangerous things to carry straight Through all the spilt saltpetre of the world.

'Twas a yellow rose, By that south window of the little house, My cousin Romney gathered with his hand On all my birthdays, for me, save the last; And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough, For roses to stay after.

The place is all awave with trees, Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded, Acacias having drunk the lees Of the night-dew, faint headed, And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem The fittest foliage for a dream.

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.

Lips shook Like a rose leaning o'er a brook, Which vibrates though it is not struck.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

The beautiful seems right By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong Because of weakness.

Measure not the work Until the day's out and the labour done.

Of the great body of critics ... the fact of their influence is no less undeniable than the reason why they should not be influential. The brazen kettles will be taken for oracles all the world over. But the influence is for today, for this hour--not for tomorrow and the day after--unless indeed ... the poet do himself perpetuate the influence by submitting to it.

There, the brows of mild repression--there, the lips of silent passion, Curved like an archer's bow to send the bitter arrows out.