Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browningwas one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth6 March 1806
running stars rivers
Thank God for grace, Ye who weep only! If, as some have done, Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run Soon in long rivers down the lifted face, And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
baby sweet stars
The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!
life stars flower
Who can fear Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll- Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-toll The silver iterance!-only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence, with thy soul.
girl stars prayer
The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks, held out in the smoke, like stars by day.
writing one-day three
You may write twenty lines one day--or even three like Euripides in three days--and a hundred lines in one more day--and yet on the hundred, may have been expended as much good work, as on the twenty and the three.
men roots growing
Very whitely still The lilies of our lives may reassure Their blossoms from their roots, accessible Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer; Growing straight out of man's reach, on the hill. God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.
song brave soul
O brave poets, keep back nothing; Nor mix falsehood with the whole! Look up Godward! speak the truth in Worthy song from earnest soul! Hold, in high poetic duty, Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.
voice bells poet
There's nothing great Nor small, has said a poet of our day, Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
music pain men
Yet half the beast is the great god Pan, To laugh, as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man. The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain-- For the reed that grows never more again As a reed with the reeds of the river.
hands white lilies
And lilies are still lilies, pulled By smutty hands, though spotted from their white.
squares cities pleasure
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure in life!
adversity suffering true-knowledge
True knowledge comes only through suffering.
green might rooms
A great acacia, with its slender trunk And overpoise of multitudinous leaves. (In which a hundred fields might spill their dew And intense verdure, yet find room enough) Stood reconciling all the place with green.
book writing men
Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.