Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Trending quotes (page 4)

“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 curvèd point, — what bitter wrong
Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented?”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

No. XXII
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

Soul , Strong , Drawing

“But so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bianca Among the Nightingales http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3035&poem=127031, st. 12 (1862).

Men

“Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death," I said. But there
The silver answer rang—"Not Death, but Love.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

No. I
Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)

Love , Death

“Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle,
shows a heart within blood-tinctured of a veined humanity.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lady Geraldine's Courtship http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/ebbrowning/bl-ebbrown-togeorge1.htm, st. 41 (1844).

Heart

“Every wish
Is like a prayer—with God.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book II.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

God

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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Little Mattie, Stanza ii; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“And I said in underbreath —
All our life is mixed with death, —
And who knoweth which is best?
And I smiled to think God's greatness
Flowed around our incompleteness, —
Round our restlessness, His rest.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Rhyme of the Duchess; reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 514.

Life , Death , God , Smile

“The growing drama has outgrown such toys
Of simulated stature, face, and speech:
It also peradventure may outgrow
The simulation of the painted scene,
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
Its shifting fancies and celestial lights,
With all its grand orchestral silences
To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book V.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Soul , Light , Silence , Painting

“Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—
And that cannot stop their tears.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Cry of the Children http://www.webterrace.com/browning/The%20Cry%20Of%20The%20Children.htm, st. 1 (1844).

Children , Tear

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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Vision of Poets (1844)

“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.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

St. 19.
De Profundis (1862)

Sun , Despair

“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.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

St. 3 - 4.
De Profundis (1862)

Love , Fear , Hope , Nature

“Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

To George Sand, A Desire http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/ebbrowning/bl-ebbrown-togeorge1.htm (1844).

Heart

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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Book II.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Beauty

“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Grief http://www.webterrace.com/browning/Grief.htm, l. 1 (1844).

“But since he had
The genuis to be loved, why let him have
The justice to be honoured in his grave.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Crowned and Buried, xxvii reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Justice

“"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, Sir, I say.
Colours seen by candlelight,
Will not look the same by day.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Lady's Yes http://www.webterrace.com/browning/The%20Ladys%20Yes.htm, st. 1 (1844).

Night

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

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Vision of Poets (1844)

World , Tear , Laughter , Time

“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.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bk. V, l. 200-207.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)

Age , World , Thinking , Passion

“The cypress stood up like a church
That night we felt our love would hold,
And saintly moonlight seemed to search
And wash the whole world clean as gold;
The olives crystallized the vales'
Broad slopes until the hills grew strong:
The fireflies and the nightingales
Throbbed each to either, flame and song.
The nightingales, the nightingales.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Bianca Among the Nightingales http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=3035&poem=127031, st. 1 (1862).

Love , World , Search , Strong