“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)

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning 88

English poet, author 1806–1861

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