To Flush, My Dog / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Loving friend, the gift of one,

Who, her own true faith, hath run,

Through thy lower nature;

Be my benediction said

With my hand upon thy head,

Gentle fellow-creature!

The Lady's Yes / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

" Yes!" I answered you last night;

" No!" this morning, Sir, I say!

Colours, seen by candle-light,

Will not look the same by day.

When the tabors played their best,

Lamps above, and laughs below--

Love me sounded like a jest,

Fit for Yes or fit for No!

The Cry of the Children / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;

The young birds are chirping in the nest;

The young fawns are playing with the shadows;

The Best Thing in the World

What's the best thing in the world?

June-rose, by May-dew impearled;

Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;

Truth, not cruel to a friend;

Pleasure, not in haste to end;

Beauty, not self-decked and curled

Till its pride is over-plain;

Love, when, so, you're loved again.

What's the best thing in the world?

-- Something out of it, I think.

Only a Curl / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I.

Friends of faces unknown and a land

Unvisited over the sea,

Who tell me how lonely you stand

With a single gold curl in the hand

Held up to be looked at by me,--

My Heart and I / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I.

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.

We sit beside the headstone thus,

And wish that name were carved for us.

The moss reprints more tenderly

The hard types of the mason's knife,

As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life

With which we're tired, my heart and I.

Mother and Poet / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,

And one of them shot in the west by the sea.

Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast

And are wanting a great song for Italy free,

Let none look at me!

Lord Walter's Wife / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I

'But where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,

And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

II

'Because I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,

And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.'

How do I Love Thee? ( Sonnet XLIII) / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

Grief / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--

Change Upon Change / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Five months ago the stream did flow,

The lilies bloomed within the sedge,

And we were lingering to and fro,

Where none will track thee in this snow,

Along the stream, beside the hedge.

Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!

For if I do not hear thy foot,

The frozen river is as mute,

The flowers have dried down to the root:

And why, since these be changed since May,

Shouldst thou change less than they.

Beloved, my Beloved ( Sonnet XX) / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think

That thou wast in the world a year ago,

What time I sat alone here in the snow

And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink

No moment at thy voice, but, link by link,

Went counting all my chains as if that so

They never could fall off at any blow

Struck by thy possible hand,--why, thus I drink

Of life's great cup of wonder! Wonderful,

A Musical Instrument / Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I.

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.