Elizabeth Barrett Browning
First Lines
A thought lay like a flower upon mine heart,
ALL are not taken! there are left behind
And, O beloved voices, upon which
Experience, like a pale musician, holds
He dwelt alone, and, sun and moon,
I count the dismal time by months and years,
I have been in the meadows all the day,
I stand by the river where both of us stood,
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless --
I think that look of Christ might seem to say --
I think we are too ready with complaint
If all the gentlest-hearted friends I know
If God compel thee to this destiny,
In death-sheets lieth Rosalind,
Light human nature is too lightly tost
My future will not copy fair my past
Now by the verdure on thy thousand hills,
"O dreary life!" we cry, "O dreary life!"
Sleep, little babe, on my knee,
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
Sweet, thou hast trod on a heart.
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
The poet oped his bolted door,
The poet's vow was inly sworn --
The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word --
The seraph sings before the manifest
The woman singeth at her spinning-wheel
Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man,
True genius, but true woman! dost deny
Two sayings of the Holy Scriptures beat
We are borne into life -- it is sweet, it is strange!
We overstate the ills of life, and take
What are we set on earth for? Say, to toil --
When I attain to utter forth in verse
When some beloved voice that was to you
When some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
With stammering lips and insufficient sound,
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