Elizabeth Barrett Browning
English poet, the wife of Robert Browning, the most respected and
successful woman poet of the Victorian period. Elizabeth Browning was
considered seriously for the laureateship that eventually was awarded to Tennyson in 1850. Her greatest work,
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), is a sequence of love sonnets addresses to
her husband. Browning's vivid intelligence and ethereal physical appearance
made a lifelong impression to Ruskin, Carlyle, Thackeray, Rossetti, Hawthorne,
and many others.
Elizabeth
Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born at Coxhoe Hall, near Durham. Her father was
Edward Moulton-Barrett, whose wealth was derived from sugar plantations in the
British colony of Jamaica. Mary Graham-Clarke, her mother, came from a family
with similar commercial interests. Elizabeth grew up in the west of England and
was largely educated at home by a tutor, quickly learning French, Latin and
Greek. Both parents supported her early writing and many of her birthday odes
to her parents and siblings still survive. At the age of 14, she wrote her
first collection of verse, The Battle of Marathon. It was followed by An Essay on
Mind (1826), privately printed at her father's expense. Her translation of Prometeus
Bound (1833) with other poems appeared anonymously. Browning's first work to
gain critical attention was The Seraphim, and other Poems (1838).
SOME SONNETS BY ELIZABETH BARRET BROWNING
XLIII.
"How do I love thee? Let
me count the ways..."
How do I love thee? Let me
count the ways.
I love thee to the depth
and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when
feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and
ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of
everyday's
Most 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 a passion
put to use
In my old griefs, and with
my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I
seemed to lose
With 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.
XLIV.
"Belovèd, thou hast
brought me many flowers..."
Belovèd, thou hast brought
me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all
the summer through
And winter, and it seemed
as if they grew
In this close room, nor
missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of
that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts
which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold
days I withdrew
From my heart's ground.
Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter
weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet
here's eglantine,
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.
XLII.
"'My
future will not copy fair my past'..."
'My future will not copy
fair my past'---
I wrote that once; and
thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel
justified
The word by his appealing
look upcast
To the white throne of God,
I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw
thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul! Then
I, long tried
By natural ills, received
the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy
sight, my pilgrim's staff
Gave out green leaves with
morning dews impearled.
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!
XLI.
"I thank
all who have loved me in their hearts..."
I thank all who have loved
me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from
mine. Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near
the prison-wall
To hear my music in its
louder parts
Ere they went onward, each
one to the mart's
Or temple's occupation,
beyond call.
But thou, who, in my
voice's sink and fall
When the sob took it, thy
divinest Art's
Own instrument didst drop
down at thy foot
To hearken what I said
between my tears, . . .
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!
XL.
"Oh,
yes! they love through all this world of ours..."
Oh, yes! they love through
all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love,
called love forsooth.
I have heard love talked in
my early youth,
And since, not so long back
but that the flowers
Then gathered, smell still.
Mussulmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile,
and have no ruth
For any weeping. Polypheme's
white tooth
Slips on the nut if, after
frequent showers,
The shell is
over-smooth,---and not so much
Will turn the thing called
love, aside to hate
Or else to oblivion. But
thou art not such
A lover, my Belovèd! thou
canst wait
Through sorrow and
sickness, to bring souls to touch,
And think it soon when
others cry 'Too late.'
XXXIX.
"Because thou hast the power and own'st the grace..."
Because thou hast the power
and own'st the grace
To look through and behind
this mask of me
(Against which years have
beat thus blanchingly
With their rains), and
behold my soul's true face,
The dim and weary witness
of life's race,---
Because thou hast the faith
and love to see,
Through that same soul's
distracting lethargy,
The patient angel waiting
for a place
In the new
Heavens,---because nor sin nor woe,
Nor God's infliction, nor
death's neighbourhood,
Nor all which others
viewing, turn to go,
Nor all which makes me
tired of all, self-viewed,---
Nothing repels thee, . . .
Dearest, teach me so
To pour out gratitude, as
thou dost, good!
XXXVIII.
"First time he kissed me, he but only kissed..."
First time he kissed me, he
but only kissed
The fingers of this hand
wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew
more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings,
quick with its 'Oh, list,'
When the angels speak. A
ring of amethyst
I could not wear here,
plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The
second passed in height
The first, and sought the
forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O
beyond meed!
That was the chrism of
love, which love's own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness,
did precede.
The third upon my lips was
folded down
In perfect, purple state;
since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said,
'My love, my own.'
XXXVII.
"Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make..."
Pardon, oh, pardon, that my
soul should make
Of all that strong
divineness which I know
For thine and thee, an
image only so
Formed of the sand, and fit
to shift and break.
It is that distant years
which did not take
Thy sovranty, recoiling
with a blow,
Have forced my swimming
brain to undergo
Their doubt and dread, and
blindly to forsake
Thy purity of likeness and
distort
Thy worthiest love to a
worthless counterfeit:
As if a shipwrecked Pagan,
safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to
commemorate,
Should set a sculptured
porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within
the temple gate.
XXXVI.
"When
we met first and loved, I did not build..."
When we met first and
loved, I did not build
Upon the event with marble.
Could it mean
To last, a love set
pendulous between
Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I
rather thrilled,
Distrusting every light
that seemed to gild
The onward path, and feared
to overlean
A finger even. And, though
I have grown serene
And strong since then, I
think that God has willed
A still renewable fear . .
. O love, O troth . . .
Lest these enclaspèd hands
should never hold,
This mutual kiss drop down
between us both
As an unowned thing, once
the lips being cold,
And Love be false! if he, to keep one oath,
Must lose one joy, by his life's star foretold.
XXXV.
"If I
leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange..."
If I leave all for thee,
wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I
never miss
Home-talk and blessing and
the common kiss
That comes to each in turn,
nor count it strange,
When I look up, to drop on
a new range
Of walls and floors,
another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that
place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too
tender to know change?
That's hardest. If to
conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief, tries
more, as all things prove;
For grief indeed is love
and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so I
am hard to love.
Yet love me---wilt thou?
Open thine heart wide,
And fold within, the wet
wings of thy dove.
XXXIV.
"With
the same heart, I said, I'll answer thee..."
With the same heart, I
said, I'll answer thee
As those, when thou shalt
call me by my name---
Lo, the vain promise! is
the same, the same,
Perplexed and ruffled by
life's strategy?
When called before, I told
how hastily
I dropped my flowers or
brake off from a a game,
To run and answer with the
smile that came
At play last moment, and
went on with me
Through my obedience. When
I answer now,
I drop a grave thought,
break from solitude;
Yet still my heart goes to
thee---ponder how---
Not as to a single good,
but all my good!
Lay thy hand on it, best
one, and allow
That no child's foot could
run fast as this blood.
You can find more other poems by Elizabeth Barret Browning at
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