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
afloat breaking god golden great paddling ruin spreading
What was he doing, the great god Pan, / Down in the reeds by the river? / Spreading ruin and scattering ban, / Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, / And breaking the golden lilies afloat / With the dragon-fly on the river.
among beat books cases creeping felt fossils found giant high hour mouse pulling ribs secret small sun victorious
Books, books, books had found the secret of a garret-room piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large, /where, creeping in and out among the giant fossils of my past, like some small nimble mouse between the ribs of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there at this or that box, pulling through the gap, in heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, the first book first. And how I felt it beat under my pillow, in the morning's dark. An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
measure until work
Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor's done.
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.
prayer wish praying-to-god
Every wish Is like a prayer--with God.
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.
wish lilies trophies
I wish I were the lily's leaf To fade upon that bosom warm, Content to wither, pale and brief, The trophy of thy paler form.
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.