Quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

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.

Whatever's lost, it first was won; We will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on.

Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief misery, The sharp regalia are for Thee Whose days eternally go on!' For us, whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, willest what is done, Grief may be joy misunderstood; Only the Good discerns the good. I trust Thee while my days go on.

By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear Him charge his saints that none Among his creatures anywhere Blaspheme against Him with despair, However darkly days go on.

The heart which, like a staff, was one For mine to lean and rest upon, The strongest on the longest day With steadfast love, is caught away, And yet my days go on, go on. And cold before my summer's done, And deaf in Nature's general tune, And fallen too low for special fear, And here, with hope no longer here, While the tears drop, my days go on.

Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself, cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally, And build up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God.

That he, in his developed manhood, stood A little sunburnt by the glare of life; While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me.

Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope, Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state, Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.

If I married him, I would not dare to call my soul my own, Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought And every heart-beat down there in the bill, Not one found honestly deductible From any use that pleased him!

Dreams of doing good For good-for-nothing people.

Life, struck sharp on death, Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love' 'Love, my child, love, love!'(then he had done with grief) 'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone, And none was left to love in all the world.

Here's ivy! take them, as I used to do Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine. Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true, And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

I seek no copy now of life's first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future's epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot My soul's full meaning into future years, That they should lend it utterance, and salute Love that endures, from life that disappears!

God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvd point, what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented?

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow.

Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more.

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men.

And Chaucer, with his infantine Familiar clasp of things divine.

There Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb The crowns o the world; oh, eyes sublime With tears and laughter for all time!

She has seen the mystery hid Under Egypt's pyramid: By those eyelids pale and close Now she knows what Rhamses knows.

The Devil's most devilish when respectable.