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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

Eve is a twofold mystery --

Experience, like a pale musician, holds

He dwelt alone, and, sun and moon,

I classed, appraising once,

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

I would build a cloudy House

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,

Wordsworth upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud

You love all, you say,

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Springtime, 1984

By

Arnold Alaniz

35x28 Fine Art Print

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