Title: POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
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Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Table of Contents
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS ............................................................................................................................1
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.....................................................................................................................1
A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATHBED ....................................................................................1
ADEQUACY...........................................................................................................................................2
AN APPREHENSION .............................................................................................................................2
CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON..........................................................................................3
COMFORT..............................................................................................................................................3
DISCONTENT........................................................................................................................................4
EXAGGERATION ..................................................................................................................................4
FUTURITY ..............................................................................................................................................5
GRIEF ......................................................................................................................................................5
INSUFFICIENCY...................................................................................................................................6
IRREPARABLENESS............................................................................................................................6
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON .............................................................7
PAIN IN PLEASURE ..............................................................................................................................7
PAST AND FUTURE.............................................................................................................................8
PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE .....................................................................................................8
PERPLEXED MUSIC.............................................................................................................................9
SUBSTITUTION ...................................................................................................................................10
TEARS ...................................................................................................................................................10
THE LOOK ............................................................................................................................................11
THE MEANING OF THE LOOK .........................................................................................................11
THE PRISONER...................................................................................................................................12
THE SERAPH AND POET ...................................................................................................................12
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION................................................................................................................13
THE TWO SAYINGS...........................................................................................................................13
TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE.........................................................................................................14
TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION ............................................................................................14
WORK...................................................................................................................................................15
WORK AND CONTEMPLATION .......................................................................................................15
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
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POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATHBED
ADEQUACY
AN APPREHENSION
CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON
COMFORT
DISCONTENT
EXAGGERATION
FUTURITY
GRIEF
INSUFFICIENCY
IRREPARABLENESS
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON
PAIN IN PLEASURE
PAST AND FUTURE
PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE
PERPLEXED MUSIC
SUBSTITUTION
TEARS
THE LOOK
THE MEANING OF THE LOOK
THE PRISONER
THE SERAPH AND POET
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION
THE TWO SAYINGS
TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE
TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION
WORK
WORK AND CONTEMPLATION
A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATHBED
INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND E. C.
IF God compel thee to this destiny,
To die alone, with none beside thy bed
To ruffle round with sobs thy last word said
And mark with tears the pulses ebb from thee,
Pray then alone, 'O Christ, come tenderly!
By thy forsaken Sonship in the red
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS 1
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Drear winepress,by the wilderness outspread,
And the lone garden where thine agony
Fell bloody from thy brow,by all of those
Permitted desolations, comfort mine!
No earthly friend being near me, interpose
No deathly angel 'twixt my face aud thine,
But stoop Thyself to gather my life's rose,
And smile away my mortal to Divine! '
ADEQUACY
NOW, by the verdure on thy thousand hills,
Beloved England, doth the earth appear
Quite good enough for men to overbear
The will of God in, with rebellious wills!
We cannot say the morningsun fulfils
Ingloriously its course, nor that the clear
Strong stars without significance insphere
Our habitation: we, meantime, our ills
Heap up against this good and lift a cry
Against this workday world, this illspread feast,
As if ourselves were better certainly
Than what we come to. Maker and High Priest,
I ask thee not my joys to multiply,
Only to make me worthier of the least.
AN APPREHENSION
IF all the gentlesthearted friends I know
Concentred in one heart their gentleness,
That still grew gentler till its pulse was less
For life than pity,I should yet be slow
To bring my own heart nakedly below
The palm of such a friend, that he should press
Motive, condition, means, appliances,
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
ADEQUACY 2
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My false ideal joy and fickle woe,
Out full to light and knowledge; I should fear
Some plait between the brows, some rougher chime
In the free voice. O angels, let your flood
Of bitter scorn dash on me! do ye hear
What I say who hear calmly all the time
This everlasting face to face with GOD ?
CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON
I THINK we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God's. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint
To muse upon eternity's constraint
Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint ?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints ? At least it may be said
'Because the way is short, I thank thee, God. '
COMFORT
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
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON 3
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In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection thus, in sooth,
To lose the sense of losing. As a child,
Whose songbird seeks the wood for evermore
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth
Till, sinking on her breast, lovereconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
DISCONTENT
LIGHT human nature is too lightly tost
And ruffled without cause, complaining on
Restless with rest, until, being overthrown,
It learneth to lie quiet. Let a frost
Or a small wasp have crept to the innermost
Of our ripe peach, or let the wilful sun
Shine westward of our window,straight we run
A furlong's sigh as if the world were lost.
But what time through the heart and through the brain
God hath transfixed us,we, so moved before,
Attain to a calm. Ay, shouldering weights of pain,
We anchor in deep waters, safe from shore,
And hear submissive o'er the stormy main
God's chartered judgments walk for evermore.
EXAGGERATION
WE overstate the ills of life, and take
Imagination (given us to bring down
The choirs of singing angels overshone
By God's clear glory) down our earth to rake
The dismal snows instead, flake following flake,
To cover all the corn; we walk upon
The shadow of hills across a level thrown,
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
DISCONTENT 4
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And pant like climbers: near the alder brake
We sigh so loud, the nightingale within
Refuses to sing loud, as else she would.
O brothers, let us leave the shame and sin
Of taking vainly, in a plaintive mood,
The holy name of GRIEF!holy herein
That by the grief of ONE came all our good.
FUTURITY
AND, O beloved voices, upon which
Ours passionately call because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song
We sang together softly, to enrich
The poor world with the sense of love, and witch,
The heart out of things evil,I am strong,
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among
The hills, with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche
In Heaven to hold our idols; and albeit
He brake them to our faces and denied
That our close kisses should impair their white,
I know we shall behold them raised, complete,
The dust swept from their beauty,glorified
New Memnons singing in the great Godlight.
GRIEF
I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Halftaught 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 silentbare
Under the blanching, vertical eyeglare
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
FUTURITY 5
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Of the absolute Heavens. Deephearted 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.
INSUFFICIENCY
When I attain to utter forth in verse
Some inward thought, my soul throbs audibly
Along my pulses, yearning to be free
And something farther, fuller, higher, rehearse
To the individual, true, and the universe,
In consummation of right harmony:
But, like a windexposed distorted tree,
We are blown against for ever by the curse
Which breathes through Nature. Oh, the world is weak!
The effluence of each is false to all,
And what we best conceive we fail to speak.
Wait, soul, until thine ashen garments fall,
And then resume thy broken strains, and seek
Fit peroration without let or thrall.
IRREPARABLENESS
I HAVE been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do fieldwork on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
INSUFFICIENCY 6
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Because more warmly clasped,and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counsellors, dear friends ? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more ?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON
WORDSWORTH upon Helvellyn! Let the cloud
Ebb audibly along the mountainwind,
Then break against the rock, and show behind
The lowland valleys floating up to crowd
The sense with beauty. He with forehead bowed
And humblelidded eyes, as one inclined
Before the sovran thought of his own mind,
And very meek with inspirations proud,
Takes here his rightful place as poetpriest
By the high altar, singing prayer and prayer
To the higher Heavens. A noble vision free
Our Haydon's hand has flung out from the mist:
No portrait this, with Academic air!
This is the poet and his poetry.
PAIN IN PLEASURE
A THOUGHT ay like a flower upon mine heart,
And drew around it other thoughts like bees
For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses;
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON 7
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Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art
Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart
Could lure those insect swarms from orangetrees
That I might hive with me such thoughts and please
My soul so, always. foolish counterpart
Of a weak man's vain wishes! While I spoke,
The thought I called a flower grew nettlerough
The thoughts, called bees, stung me to festering:
Oh, entertain (cried Reason as she woke)
Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough,
And they will all prove sad enough to sting!
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
Says no grace after meat. My wine has 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
PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE
'O DREARY life,'we cry, 'O dreary life! '
And still the generations of the birds
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PAST AND FUTURE 8
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Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven's true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle! Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land, savannahswards
Unweary sweep, hills watch unworn, and rife
Meek leaves drop year]y from the foresttrees
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory: O thou God of old,
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these!
But so much patience as a blade of grass
Grows by, contented through the heat and cold.
PERPLEXED MUSIC
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO E. J.
EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand,
Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,
Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds
In sadperplexed minors: deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear, and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur 'Where is any certain tune
Or measured music in such notes as these ? '
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences,
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper
SWEET.
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
PERPLEXED MUSIC 9
Page No 12
SUBSTITUTION
WHEN some beloved voice that was to you
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly,
And silence, against which you dare not cry,
Aches round you like a strong disease and new
What hope ? what help ? what music will undo
That silence to your sense ? Not friendship's sigh,
Not reason's subtle count; not melody
Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew;
Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales
Whose hearts leap upward through the cypresstrees
To the clear moon; nor yet the spheric laws
Selfchanted, nor the angels'sweet 'All hails,'
Met in the smile of God: nay, none of these.
Speak THOU, availing Christ!and fill this pause.
TEARS
THANK God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well
That is light grieving! lighter, none befell
Since Adam forfeited the primal lot.
Tears! what are tears ? The babe weeps in its cot,
The mother singing, at her marriagebell
The bride weeps, and before the oracle
Of highfaned hills the poet has forgot
Such moisture on his cheeks. Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tearblinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs,look up I those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
SUBSTITUTION 10
Page No 13
THE LOOK
The Saviour looked on Peter. Ay, no word,
No gesture of reproach; the Heavens serene
Though heavy with armed justice, did not lean
Their thunders that way: the forsaken Lord
Looked only, on the traitor. None record
What that look was, none guess; for those who have seen
Wronged lovers loving through a deathpang keen,
Or palecheeked martyrs smiling to a sword,
Have missed Jehovah at the judgmentcall.
And Peter, from the height of blasphemy
'I never knew this man 'did quail and fall
As knowing straight THAT GOD; and turned free
And went out speechless from the face of all
And filled the silenc, weeping bitterly.
THE MEANING OF THE LOOK
I think that look of Christ might seem to say
'Thou Peter! art thou then a common stone
Which I at last must break my heart upon
For all God's charge to his high angels may
Guard my foot better ? Did I yesterday
Wash thy feet, my beloved, that they should run
Quick to deny me 'neath the morning sun ?
And do thy kisses, like the rest, betray ?
The cock crows coldly.GO, and manifest
A late contrition, but no bootless fear!
For when thy final need is dreariest,
Thou shalt not be denied, as I am here;
My voice to God and angels shall attest,
Because I KNOW this man, let him be clear.'
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
THE LOOK 11
Page No 14
THE PRISONER
I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.
THE SERAPH AND POET
THE seraph sings before the manifest
GodOne, and in the burning of the Seven,
And with the full life of consummate
Heaving beneath him like a mother's
Warm with her firstborn's slumber in that
The poet sings upon the earth graveriven,
Before the naughty world, soon selfforgiven
For wronging him,and in the darkness prest
From his own soul by worldly weights.
Even so,
Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high;
Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low:
The universe's inward voices cry
'Amen' to either song of joy and woe:
Sing, seraph,poet,sing on equally!
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
THE PRISONER 12
Page No 15
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION
WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling interwound
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground.
This song of soul I struggle to outbear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,as the thunderroll
Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.
THE TWO SAYINGS
Two savings of the Holy Scriptures beat
Like pulses in the Church's brow and breast;
And by them we find rest in our unrest
And, heart deep in salttears, do yet entreat
God's fellowship as if on heavenly seat.
The first is JESUS WEPT,whereon is prest
Full many a sobbing face that drops its best
And sweetest waters on the record sweet:
And one is where the Christ, denied and scorned
LOOKED UPON PETER. Oh, to render plain
By help of having loved a little and mourned,
That look of sovran love and sovran pain
Which HE, who could not sin yet suffered, turned
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION 13
Page No 16
On him who could reject but not sustain!
TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE
THOU largebrained woman and largehearted man,
Selfcalled George Sand! whose soul, amid the lions
Of thy tumultuous senses, moans defiance
And answers roar for roar, as spirits can:
I would some mild miraculous thunder ran
Above the applauded circus, in appliance
Of thine own nobler nature's strength and science,
Drawing two pinions, white as wings of swan,
From thy strong shoulders, to amaze the place
With holier light! that thou to woman's claim
And man's, mightst join beside the angel's grace
Of a pure genius sanctified from blame
Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace
To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.
TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION
TRUE genius, but true woman! dost deny
The woman's nature with a manly scorn
And break away the gauds and armlets worn
By weaker women in captivity?
Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry
Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn, _
Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn
Floats back dishevelled strength in agony
Disproving thy man's name: and while before
The world thou burnest in a poetfire,
We see thy womanheart beat evermore
Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher,
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE 14
Page No 17
Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore
Where unincarnate spirits purely aspire!
WORK
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 fellowworkers 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 dewdrop with another near.
WORK AND CONTEMPLATION
The woman singeth at her spinningwheel
A pleasant chant, ballad or barcarole;
She thinketh of her song, upon the whole,
Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel
Is full, and artfully her fingers feel
With quick adjustment, provident control,
The linestoo subtly twisted to unroll
Out to a perfect thread. I hence appeal
To the dear Christian Churchthat we may do
Our Father's business in these temples mirk,
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
WORK 15
Page No 18
Thus swift and steadfast, thus intent and strong;
While thus, apart from toil, our souls pursue
Some high calm spheric tune, and prove our work
The better for the sweetness of our song.
POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS
WORK 16
Bookmarks
1. Table of Contents, page = 3
2. POEMS OF 1844: SONNETS, page = 4
3. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, page = 4
4. A THOUGHT FOR A LONELY DEATH-BED, page = 4
5. ADEQUACY, page = 5
6. AN APPREHENSION, page = 5
7. CHEERFULNESS TAUGHT BY REASON, page = 6
8. COMFORT, page = 6
9. DISCONTENT, page = 7
10. EXAGGERATION, page = 7
11. FUTURITY, page = 8
12. GRIEF, page = 8
13. INSUFFICIENCY, page = 9
14. IRREPARABLENESS, page = 9
15. ON A PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH BY B. R. HAYDON, page = 10
16. PAIN IN PLEASURE, page = 10
17. PAST AND FUTURE, page = 11
18. PATIENCE TAUGHT BY NATURE, page = 11
19. PERPLEXED MUSIC, page = 12
20. SUBSTITUTION, page = 13
21. TEARS, page = 13
22. THE LOOK, page = 14
23. THE MEANING OF THE LOOK, page = 14
24. THE PRISONER, page = 15
25. THE SERAPH AND POET, page = 15
26. THE SOUL'S EXPRESSION, page = 16
27. THE TWO SAYINGS, page = 16
28. TO GEORGE SAND: A DESIRE, page = 17
29. TO GEORGE SAND: A RECOGNITION, page = 17
30. WORK, page = 18
31. WORK AND CONTEMPLATION, page = 18