Comfort – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet
From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to mo as to Mary at thy feet !
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection — thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore
Is sung to in its stead by mother’s mouth
Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

The Autumn – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Go, sit upon the lofty hill,
And turn your eyes around,
Where waving woods and waters wild
Do hymn an autumn sound.
The summer sun is faint on them —
The summer flowers depart —
Sit still — as all transform’d to stone,
Except your musing heart.

How there you sat in summer-time,
May yet be in your mind;
And how you heard the green woods sing
Beneath the freshening wind.
Though the same wind now blows around,
You would its blast recall;
For every breath that stirs the trees,
Doth cause a leaf to fall.

Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth
That flesh and dust impart:
We cannot bear its visitings,
When change is on the heart.
Gay words and jests may make us smile,
When Sorrow is asleep;
But other things must make us smile,
When Sorrow bids us weep!

The dearest hands that clasp our hands, —
Their presence may be o’er;
The dearest voice that meets our ear,
That tone may come no more!
Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth,
Which once refresh’d our mind,
Shall come — as, on those sighing woods,
The chilling autumn wind.

Hear not the wind — view not the woods;
Look out o’er vale and hill-
In spring, the sky encircled them —
The sky is round them still.
Come autumn’s scathe — come winter’s cold —
Come change — and human fate!
Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound,
Can ne’er be desolate.

Work – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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 through thee to
The least flower with a brimming cup may stand,
And share its dew-drop with another near.

Past And Future – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Past And Future.MY future will not copy fair my past 

On any leaf but Heaven’s. Be fully done, 

Supernal Will ! I would not fain be one 

Who, satisfying thirst and breaking fast 

Upon the fulness of the heart, at last 

Saith no grace after meat. My wine hath run 

Indeed out of my cup, and there is none 

To gather up the bread of my repast 

Scattered and trampled ! Yet I find some good 

In earth’s green herbs, and streams that bubble up 

Clear from the darkling ground, — content until 

I sit with angels before better food. 

Dear Christ ! when thy new vintage fills my cup, 

This hand shall shake no more, nor that wine spill.

Only A Curl – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I. 

FRIENDS of faces unknown and a land 

Unvisited over the sea, 

Who tell me how lonely you stand 

With a single gold curl in the hand 

Held up to be looked at by me, — 

II. 

While you ask me to ponder and say 

What a father and mother can do, 

With the bright fellow-locks put away 

Out of reach, beyond kiss, in the clay 

Where the violets press nearer than you. 

III. 
Shall I speak like a poet, or run 

Into weak woman’s tears for relief ? 

Oh, children ! — I never lost one, — 

Yet my arm ‘s round my own little son, 

And Love knows the secret of Grief. 

IV. 

And I feel what it must be and is, 

When God draws a new angel so 

Through the house of a man up to His, 

With a murmur of music, you miss, 

And a rapture of light, you forgo. 

V. 
How you think, staring on at the door, 

Where the face of your angel flashed in, 

That its brightness, familiar before, 

Burns off from you ever the more 

For the dark of your sorrow and sin. 

VI. 
`God lent him and takes him,’ you sigh ; 

— Nay, there let me break with your pain : 

God ‘s generous in giving, say I, — 

And the thing which He gives, I deny 

That He ever can take back again. 

VII. 
He gives what He gives. I appeal 

To all who bear babes — in the hour 

When the veil of the body we feel 

Rent round us, — while torments reveal 

The motherhood’s advent in power, 

VIII. 
And the babe cries ! — has each of us known 

By apocalypse (God being there 

Full in nature) the child is our own, 

Life of life, love of love, moan of moan, 

Through all changes, all times, everywhere. 

IX. 
He ‘s ours and for ever. Believe, 

O father ! — O mother, look back 

To the first love’s assurance. To give 

Means with God not to tempt or deceive 

With a cup thrust in Benjamin’s sack. 

X. 
He gives what He gives. Be content ! 

He resumes nothing given, — be sure ! 

God lend ? Where the usurers lent 

In His temple, indignant He went 

And scourged away all those impure. 

XI. 
He lends not ; but gives to the end, 

As He loves to the end. If it seem 

That He draws back a gift, comprehend 

‘Tis to add to it rather, — amend, 

And finish it up to your dream, — 

XII. 
Or keep, — as a mother will toys 

Too costly, though given by herself, 

Till the room shall be stiller from noise, 

And the children more fit for such joys, 

Kept over their heads on the shelf. 

XIII. 
So look up, friends ! you, who indeed 

Have possessed in your house a sweet piece 

Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need 

Be more earnest than others are,–speed 

Where they loiter, persist where they cease. 

XIV. 
You know how one angel smiles there. 

Then weep not. ‘Tis easy for you 

To be drawn by a single gold hair 

Of that curl, from earth’s storm and despair, 

To the safe place above us. Adieu.

Love – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We cannot live, except thus mutually 

We alternate, aware or unaware, 

The reflex act of life: and when we bear 

Our virtue onward most impulsively, 

Most full of invocation, and to be 

Most instantly compellant, certes, there 

We live most life, whoever breathes most air 

And counts his dying years by sun and sea. 

But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth 

Throw out her full force on another soul, 

The conscience and the concentration both make 

mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole 

And aim consummated, is Love in sooth, 

As nature’s magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.

Comfort – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

SPEAK low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet 

From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low 

Lest I should fear and fall, and miss Thee so 

Who art not missed by any that entreat. 

Speak to mo as to Mary at thy feet ! 

And if no precious gums my hands bestow, 

Let my tears drop like amber while I go 

In reach of thy divinest voice complete 

In humanest affection — thus, in sooth, 

To lose the sense of losing. As a child, 

Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore 

Is sung to in its stead by mother’s mouth 

Till, sinking on her breast, love-reconciled, 

He sleeps the faster that he wept before.