Literary and Philosophical Quotes -- Poets and Dreamers -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Quotes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning 5
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born March 6, 1806, near Durham, Durham, Eng., died June 29, 1861, Florence. British poet. Overcoming ill health and the jealous objections of her tyrannical father, she eloped to Italy with Robert Browning and married him in 1846. Her greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), is a sequence of love poems written to her husband.
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- or a stool To stumble over and vex you . . . curse that stool! Or else at best, a cushion, where you lean And sleep, and dream of something we are not, But would be for your sake. Alas, alas! This hurts most, this . . . that, after all, we are paid The worth of our work, perhaps.
All men are possible heroes: every age, Heroic in proportions, double-faced, Looks backward and before, expects a morn And claims an epos. Ay, but every age Appears to souls who live in it (ask Carlyle) Most unheroic.
We all have known Good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up.- Now, may the good God pardon all good men!
What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just Deed- and not for pay? Absurd,- or insincere.
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?
But the child's sob curses deeper in the silence Than the strong man in his wrath!
Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret-room Piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large,- where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!
More Quotes by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
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