Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh (1856)

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A woman's always younger than a man
At equal years, because she is disallowed
Maturing by the outdoor sun and air,
And kept in long-clothes past the age to walk.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then?
Who's sorry for a gnat.. or girl?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The beautiful seems right
By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And truly, I reiterate,.. nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
All actual heroes are essential men,
And all men possible heroes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A man may love a woman perfectly, and yet by no means ignorantly maintain a thousand women have not larger eyes. Enough that she alone has looked at him with eyes that, large or small, have won his soul.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Truth outlives pain, as the soul does life.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
He's just, your cousin, ay, abhorrently, He'd wash his hands in blood, to keep them clean.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull our sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
And the highest fame was never reached except
By what was aimed above it.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Many a fervid man
Writes books as cold and flat as graveyard stones.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labor done;
Then bring your gauges.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
My soul,
At poetry's divine first finger-touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If I married him,
I would not dare to call my soul my own,
Which so he had bought and paid for: every thought
And every heart-beat down there in the bill,–
Not one found honestly deductible
From any use that pleased him!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Of writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,—
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Good critics, who have stamped out poets' hope,
Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state,
Good patriots, who for a theory risked a cause.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–'
'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief)
'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone,
And none was left to love in all the world.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps another!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The music soars within the little lark, And the lark soars.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I walked on, musing with myself... whether, after all, A larger metaphysics might not help Our physics...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Purple lilies Dante blew To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
There's too much abstract willing, purposing, In this poor world. We talk by aggregates, And think by systems and being used to face Our evils in statistics, are inclined To cap them with unreal remedies Drawn out in haste on the other side.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
He likes the poor things of the world the best, I would not, therefore, if I could be rich. It pleases him to stoop for buttercups..

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
For poets (bear the word) Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sweet verbena which, being brushed against, Will hold us three hours after by the smell In spite of long walks on the windy hills.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Yet how proud we are,
In daring to look down upon ourselves!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow But thinking of a wreath,... I like such ivy; bold to leap a height 'Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too (And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Those tall flowering-reeds which stand In Arno, like a sheaf of scepters left But some remote dynasty of dead gods To suck the stream for ages and get green.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
With what cracked pitchers go we to deep wells In this world!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning