Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer-
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature’s lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner’s ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with

I.
I stand on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim’s bended knee,
Where exile turned to ancestor,
And God was thanked for liberty.
I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,
I bend my knee down on this mark …
I look on the sky and the sea.

II.
O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!
I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew…
And round

THE seraph sings before the manifest
God-One, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother’s
Warm with her first-born’s slumber in that
The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven,
Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven
For wronging him,–and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights.
Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory ! heaven is high;
Sing, poet with the sorrow ! earth is

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist’s music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this-
‘He giveth His belovèd sleep’?

What would we give to our beloved?
The hero’s heart to be unmoved,
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,
The patriot’s voice, to teach

With stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And only answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into

And when, at last
Escaped,-so many a green slope built on slope
Betwixt me and the enemy’s house behind,
I dared to rest, or wander,-like a rest
Made sweeter for the step upon the grass,-
And view the ground’s most gentle dimplement,
(As if God’s finger touched but did not press
In making England!) such an up and down
Of verdure,-nothing too much up or down,
–
A ripple of land; such little hills, the sky
Can stoop to tenderly

Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church’s brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salt-tears, do yet entreat
God’s fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is JESUS WEPT,-whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
LOOKED UPON PETER. Oh, to render plain
By

Which is the weakest thing of all
Mine heart can ponder?
The sun, a little cloud can pall
With darkness yonder?
The cloud, a little wind can move
Where’er it listeth?
The wind, a little leaf above,
Though sere, resisteth?

What time that yellow leaf was green,
My days were gladder;
But now, whatever Spring may mean,
I must grow sadder.
Ah me! a leaf with sighs can wring
My lips asunder-
Then is mine heart the weakest thing
Itself can ponder.

Yet, Heart, when

(1844)
Loving friend, the gift of one,
Who, her own true faith, hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow-creature!
…
Like a lady’s ringlets brown,
Flow thy silken ears adown
Either side demurely,
Of thy silver-suited breast
Shining out from all the rest
Of thy body purely.
…
Darkly brown thy body is,
Till the sunshine, striking this,
Alchemize its dulness,–
When the sleek curls manifold
Flash all over into gold,
With a burnished fulness.
…
Underneath my stroking hand,
Startled

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
Self-called George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:
I would some mild miraculous thunder ran
Above the applauded circus, in appliance
Of thine own nobler nature’s strength and science,
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place
With holier light! that thou to woman’s claim
And man’s, mightst join beside the

The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The lines–too subtly twisted to unroll–
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Church–that we may do
Our Father’s business in these temples mirk,
Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong;
While