"Though these that were Gods are dead, and thou being dead art a God, Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to thee dead."

"Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fullness of death."

"Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, A bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?"

"Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites, Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites."

"Superflux of pain."

"Wilt thou fear that, and fear not my desire?"

"For words divide and rend; But silence is most noble till the end."

"His life is a watch or a vision Between a sleep and a sleep."

"His speech is a burning fire."

"Before the beginning of years There came to the making of man Time with a gift of tears, Grief with a glass that ran, Pleasure with pain for leaven, Summer with flowers that fell, Remembrance fallen from heaven, And Madness risen from hell, Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death."

"And soft as lips that laugh and hide The laughing leaves of the tree divide, And screen from seeing and leave in sight The god pursuing, the maiden hid."

"For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins."

"When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil and all the pain."

"Maiden, and mistress of the months and stars Now folded in the flowerless fields of heaven."

"God by God flits past in thunder, till His glories turn to shades; God to God bears wondering witness how His gospel flames and fades. More was each of these, yet they were, than man their servant seemed: Dead are all of these, and man survives who made them while he dreamed."

"I can truly say with Shelley that I have been fortunate in friendships: that I have been no less fortunate in my enemies than in my friends."

"There was a bad poet named Clough, Whom his friends all united to puff. But the public, though dull, Has not quite such a skull As belongs to believers in Clough."

"Sweet Love, that art so bitter."

"The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal."

"Rhyme is the native condition of lyric verse in English; a rhymeless lyric is a maimed thing."

"And lo, between the sundawn and the sun His day's work and his night's work are undone: And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one."

"Dream that the lips once breathless Might quicken if they would; Say that the soul is deathless; Dream that the gods are good; Say March may wed September, And time divorce regret; But not that you remember, And not that I forget."

"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow."

"Hush, call no echo up in further proof Of desolation! there's a voice within That weeps . . . as thou must sing . . . alone, aloof."

"Thou hast thy calling to some palace-floor, Most gracious singer of high poems! where The dancers will break footing, from the care Of watching up thy pregnant lips for more."

"Guess now who holds thee?"—"Death," I said. But there The silver answer rang—"Not Death, but Love."

"Emily Dickinson was always stirred by the existences of women like George Eliot or Elizabeth Barrett, who possessed strength of mind, articulateness, and energy. (She once characterized Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale as "holy"-one suspects she merely meant, "great.")"

"Life Loves/to change, wrote poet John Masefield,/in the cobbled town of Ledbury, Herefordshire,/Elizabeth Barrett Browning's town too./.../I felt drunk on general coziness.../thinking of Elizabeth,/whose "father never spoke to her again," once she/had a child (what was his problem?),/and Masefield, who suffered intense seasickness/yet wrote about going down to the sea/as if it were his favorite act/.../Life loves to change-but some of us want to/stay."

"Anger has always played a role in poetry...You can find powerful anger in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poems on slavery and child labor. In her anti-slavery poem “A Curse for a Nation,” she has an angel explaining that “A curse from the lips of womanhood / Is very salt, and bitter, and good.” Barrett Browning was roundly condemned in her own time for writing about politics."

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models...Elizabeth Barrett Browning admired the work of George Sand and Mme. de Staël, while her work, in its turn, was an inspiration to Emily Dickinson.,,all of the American nineteenth-century woman's rights leaders considered Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh an inspiration. The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"I praise Thee while my days go on; I love Thee while my days go on: Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank Thee while my days go on.And having in thy life-depth thrown Being and suffering (which are one), As a child drops his pebble small Down some deep well, and hears it fall Smiling — so I. THY DAYS GO ON."

"Whatever's lost, it first was won; We will not struggle nor impugn. Perhaps the cup was broken here, That Heaven's new wine might show more clear. I praise Thee while my days go on."

"Take from my head the thorn-wreath brown! No mortal grief deserves that crown. O supreme Love, chief misery, The sharp regalia are for Thee Whose days eternally go on!For us, — whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, willest what is done, Grief may be joy misunderstood; Only the Good discerns the good. I trust Thee while my days go on."

"By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear Him charge his saints that none Among his creatures anywhere Blaspheme against Him with despair, However darkly days go on."

"The heart which, like a staff, was one For mine to lean and rest upon, The strongest on the longest day With steadfast love, is caught away, And yet my days go on, go on.And cold before my summer's done, And deaf in Nature's general tune, And fallen too low for special fear, And here, with hope no longer here, While the tears drop, my days go on."

"The face, which, duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun, To mark all bright hours of the day With hourly love, is dimmed away — And yet my days go on, go on."

"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."

"Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself, — cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally, And build up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God."

"Since when was genius found respectable?"

"Nay, if there's room for poets in the world A little overgrown, (I think there is) Their sole work is to represent the age, Their age, not Charlemagne's, — this live, throbbing age, That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires, And spends more passion, more heroic heat, Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms, Than Roland with his knights, at Roncesvalles."

"The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds."

"Whoso loves Believes the impossible."

"That he, in his developed manhood, stood A little sunburnt by the glare of life; While I . . it seemed no sun had shone on me."

"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."

"God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers, And thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A gauntlet with a gift in't."

"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!"

"Every wish Is like a prayer—with God."

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

"Dreams of doing good For good-for-nothing people."

"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."