Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
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Common terms and phrases
Adam and Eve Ador angels artist Aurora Leigh beauty believe beloved bless breath Browning's called Casa Guidi Christ Christian church creature cries curse death divine Drama of Exile dream earth Elizabeth Barrett Browning England English eyes face fact feel Florence give God's grief hands happy heart heaven human love immortality Isobel's Child Italian Italy Jesus kiss letters live look love thee lover Lucifer man's Marian Erle marriage Mary Russell Mitford merism mind mother mystery mystic nature never passage passion perfect perhaps pity poem poet Poet Voices poet's poetic poetry Portuguese prayer preraphaelite pure realm Robert Browning seems Seraphim shine silence sleep smile Sonnets sorrow soul sound speak spirit stand strong Swedenborgian sweet tears things thou thought tion touch truth vision voice woman women wonderful word writing wrote Zerah
Popular passages
Page 163 - 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. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints.
Page 130 - Women know The way to rear up children (to be just), They know a simple, merry, tender knack Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes, And stringing pretty words that make no sense, And kissing full sense into empty words, Which things are corals to cut life upon, Although such trifles...
Page 118 - WHAT are we set on earth for ? Say, to toil; Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines For all the heat o' the day, till it declines, And death's mild curfew shall from work assoil. God did anoint thee with his odorous oil, To wrestle, not to reign; and he assigns All thy tears over, like pure crystallines, For younger fellow-workers of the soil To wear for amulets. So others shall Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand, From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer, And God's grace fructify...
Page 136 - we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep.
Page 157 - You never can be satisfied with praise Which men give women when they judge a book Not as mere work but as mere woman's work, Expressing the comparative respect Which means the absolute scorn. " Oh, excellent ! What grace, what facile turns, what fluent sweeps, What delicate discernment . . almost thought ! The book does honour to the sex, we hold. Among our female authors we make room For this fair writer, and congratulate The country that produces in these times Such women, competent to . . spell.
Page 132 - I who saw the human nature broad, At both sides, comprehending, too, the soul's, And all the high necessities of Art, Betrayed the thing I saw, and wronged my own life For which I pleaded. Passioned to exalt The artist's instinct in me at the cost Of putting down the woman's — I forgot No perfect artist is developed here From any imperfect woman.
Page 204 - I write so Of the only truth-tellers now left to God, The only speakers of essential truth, Opposed to relative, comparative, And temporal truths...
Page 176 - A CURSE FOR A NATION. PROLOGUE. I HEARD an angel speak last night, And he said, ' Write ! Write a Nation's curse for me, And send it over the Western Sea.
Page 153 - For that is fatal, — their angelic reach Of virtue, chiefly used to sit and darn, And fatten household sinners, — their, in brief, Potential faculty in everything...
Page 158 - Be sure, no earnest work Of any honest creature, howbeit weak, Imperfect, ill-adapted, fails so much, It is not gathered as a grain of sand To enlarge the sum of human action used For carrying out God's end.