Elizabeth Barrett Browning Quotes

Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God.

The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.

God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in’t.

I love thee with the 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.

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.

First time he kissed me, but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, And ever since it grew more clean and white…

Let the world’s sharpness like a clasping knife Shut in upon itself, and do no harm In this close hand of love.

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until their lengthening wings break into fire At either curve’d point,…what bitter wrong, Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented?

If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love’s sake only.

Straightway I was ’ware So weeping, how a mystic shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair And a voice said in mastery while I strove… ‘Guess now who holds thee!’—‘Death’, I said, but there The silver answer rang… ‘Not Death, but Love.’

I am floated along, as if I should die Of Liberty’s exquisite pain.

And the rolling anapaestic Curled, like vapour over shrines.

And because I was a poet, and because the public praised me, With their critical deductions for the modern writer’s fault ; I could sit at rich men’s tables,—though the courtesies that raise me, Still suggested clear between us, the pale spectrum of the salt.

Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.