Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Capacity for joy
Admits temptation.

Capacity for joy
Admits temptation.

Yet half the beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh, as he sits by the river,
read more

Yet half the 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 the pain--
For the reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.

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

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

Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
read more

Very whitely still
The lilies of our lives may reassure
Their blossoms from their roots, accessible
Alone to heavenly dews that drop not fewer;
Growing straight out of man's reach, on the hill.
God only, who made us rich, can make us poor.

Books, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret room
Piled high with cases in read more

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!
At last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.