Sonnet XLIII

HOW do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I love thee to the level of everyday's

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

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, -I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A Musical Instrument

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,

       Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

       With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

       From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had fled away,

       Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan

       While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

       To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

       (How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

       In holes, as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan

       (Laughed while he sat by the river),

"The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed."

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

       He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

       Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

       Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

       To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, --

For the reed which grows nevermore again

       As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Change Upon Change

FIVE months ago the stream did flow,

       The lilies bloomed within the sedge,

And we were lingering to and fro,

Where none will track thee in this snow,

       Along the stream, beside the hedge.

Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!

       For if I do not hear thy foot,

       The frozen river is as mute,

       The flowers have dried down to the root:

       And why, since these be changed since May,

              Shouldst thou change less than they.

And slow, slow as the winter snow

       The tears have drifted to mine eyes;

And my poor cheeks, five months ago

Set blushing at thy praises so,

       Put paleness on for a disguise.

Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!

       For if my face is turned too pale,

       It was thine oath that first did fail, --

       It was thy love proved false and frail, --

       And why, since these be changed enow,

              Should I change less than thou.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Grief

I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;

That only men incredulous of despair,

Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air

Beat upward to God's throne in loud access

Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,

In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare

Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare

Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express

Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--

Most like a monumental statue set

In everlasting watch and moveless woe

Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.

Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:

If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lord Walter's Wife

                        I

'BUT where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,

And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

                        II

'Because I fear you,' he answered;--'because you are far too fair,

And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-coloured hair.'

                        III

'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,

And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.'

                        IV

'Yet farewell so,' he answered; --'the sunstroke's fatal at times.

I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.

                        V

'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:

If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and where's the pretense?

                        VI

'But I,' he replied, 'have promised another, when love was free,

To love her alone, alone, who alone from afar loves me.'

                        VII

'Why, that,' she said, 'is no reason. Love's always free I am told.

Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?

                        VIII

'But you,' he replied, 'have a daughter, a young child, who was laid

In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid."

                        IX

'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. The angels keep out of the way;

And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.'

                        X

At which he rose up in his anger,--'Why now, you no longer are fair!

Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.'

                        XI

At which she laughed out in her scorn: 'These men! Oh these men overnice,

Who are shocked if a colour not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.'

                        XII

Her eyes blazed upon him--'And you! You bring us your vices so near

That we smell them! You think in our presence a thought 'twould defame us to hear!

                        XIII

'What reason had you, and what right,--I appeal to your soul from my life,--

To find me so fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife.

                        XIV

'Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply

I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high?

                        XV

'If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much

To use unlawful and fatal. The praise! --shall I thank you for such?

                        XVI

'Too fair?--not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while,

You attain to it, straightaway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile.

                        XVII

'A moment,--I pray your attention!--I have a poor word in my head

I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid.

                        XVIII

'You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring.

You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! I've broken the thing.

                        XIX

'You did me the honour, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then

In the senses--a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men.

                        XX

'Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,

And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils.

                        XXI

'I love my Walter profoundly,--you, Maude, though you faltered a week,

For the sake of . . . what is it--an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on the cheek?

                        XXII

'And since, when all's said, you're too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant

About crimes irresistable, virtues that swindle, betray and supplant.

                        XXIII

'I determined to prove to yourself that, whate'er you might dream or avow

By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now.

                        XXIV

'There! Look me full in the face!--in the face. Understand, if you can,

That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man.

                        XXV

'Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar--

You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are.

                        XXVI

'You wronged me: but then I considered . . . there's Walter! And so at the end

I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend.

                        XXVII

'Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine!

Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.'

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Best Thing in the World

WHAT'S the best thing in the world?

June-rose, by May-dew impearled;

Sweet south-wind, that means no rain;

Truth, not cruel to a friend;

Pleasure, not in haste to end;

Beauty, not self-decked and curled

Till its pride is over-plain;

Love, when, so, you're loved again.

What's the best thing in the world?

--Something out of it, I think.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Cry of the Children

DO ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,

     The young birds are chirping in the nest,

The young fawns are playing with the shadows,

     The young flowers are blowing toward the west --

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

They are weeping bitterly!

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow

Why their tears are falling so?

The old man may weep for his tomorrow

Which is lost in Long Ago;

The old tree is leafless in the forest,

     The old year is ending in the frost,

The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest,

     The old hope is hardest to be lost;

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see,

For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses

Down the cheeks of infancy;

"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary,

     Our young feet," they say, " are very weak;

Few paces have we taken, yet are weary --

     Our grave-rest is very far to seek;

Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children,

For the outside earth is cold,

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,

And the graves are for the old.

"True," say the children, "it may happen

That we die before our time;

Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen

Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her;

     Was no room for any work in the close clay!

From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

     Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

     With your ear down, little Alice never cries;

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

     For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;

And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

The shroud by the kirk-chime.

It is good when it happens," say the children,

"That we die before our time."

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking

Death in life, as best to have!

They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

With a cerement from the grave.

Go out, children, from the mine and from the city,

     Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;

Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty.

     Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!

But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine?

Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine!

"For oh," say the children, "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.

Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,

     We fall upon our faces, trying to go;

And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping

     The reddest flower would look as pale as snow,

For, all day, we drag our burden tiring

Through the coal-dark, underground;

Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron

In the factories, round and round.

"For all day the wheels are droning, turning;

Their wind comes in our faces,

Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places;

Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling,

     Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,

Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling --

     All are turning, all the day, and we with all.

And all day the iron wheels are droning,

And sometimes we could pray,

'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning),

'Stop! be silent for today!' "

Aye, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth!

Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth!

Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

     Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;

Let them prove their living souls against the notion

     That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

Grinding life down from its mark;

And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,

Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,

To look up to Him and pray;

So the blessed One who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day.

They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us,

     While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?

When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us

     Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

Strangers speaking at the door --

Is it likely God with angels shining round Him,

Hears our weeping any more?

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,

And at midnight's hour of harm,

'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.

We know no other words except 'Our Father,'

     And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,

God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

     And hold both within His right hand which is strong.

'Our Father!' If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild)

Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

'Come and rest with me, my child.'

"But, no!" say the children, weeping faster,

"He is speechless as a stone;

And they tell us, of His image is the master

Who commands us to work on.

Go to!" say the children -- "up in Heaven,

     Dark, wheellike, turning clouds are all we find.

Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving --

     We look up for God, but tears have made us blind."

Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

O my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by His world's loving,

And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you!

They are weary ere they run;

They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

Which is brighter than the sun.

They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;

     They sing in man's despair, without its calm;

Are slaves, with the liberty of Christdom,

     Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm;

Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly

The harvest of its memories cannot reap --

Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly.

Let them weep! let them weep!

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see,

For they mind you of their angels in high places,

With eyes turned on Deity.

"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,

     Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart --

Stifle down with a mailèd heel its palpitation,

     And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,

And your purple shows your path!

But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath."

Elizabeth Barrett Browning