|
|
A woman's always younger than a man of equal years.
Topic: Age
Source: None
|
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
Topic: Autumn
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VII)
|
The beauty seems right
By force of beauty, and the feeble wrong
Because of weakness.
Topic: Beauty
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I)
|
The essence of all beauty, I call love,
The attribute, the evidence, and end,
The consummation to the inward sense
Of beauty apprehended from without,
I still call love.
Topic: Beauty
Source: Sword Glare
|
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive,
Half wishing they were dead to save the shame.
The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow;
They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats,
And flare up bodily, wings and all.
Topic: Blushes
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II, l. 732)
|
We get no good
By being ungenerous, even to a book,
And calculating profits--so much help
By so much reading. It is rather when
We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge
Soul-forward, headlong, into a book's profound,
Impassioned for its beauty, and salt of truth--
'Tis then we get the right good from a book.
Topic: Books
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 700)
|
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.
Topic: Books
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 830)
|
The soul's Rialto hath its merchandise,
I barter for curl upon that mart.
Topic: Business
Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese (XIX)
|
He likes the poor things of the world the best,
I would not, therefore, if I could be rich.
It pleases him t stoop for buttercups.
Topic: Buttercups
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. IV)
|
Women know
The way to rear up children (to be just);
They know a simple, merry, tender knack
Of tying sashes, fitting baby-shoes,
And stringing pretty words that make no sense,
And kissing full sense into empty words;
Which things are corals to cut life upon,
Although such trifles.
Topic: Childhood
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 48)
|
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.
Topic: Childhood
Source: The Cry of the Children
|
"There is no God," the foolish saith, But none, "There is no sorrow." And nature oft the cry of faith In bitter need will borrow: Eyes which the preacher could not school, By wayside graves are raised; And lips say, "God be pitiful," Who ne'er said, "God be praised.".
Topic: Christianity
Source: None
|
There's not a crime
But takes its proper change out still in crime
If once rung on the counter of this world.
Topic: Crime
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III, l. 870)
|
And a breastplate made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf on leaf,
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.
Topic: Daisies
Source: Hector in the Garden
|
For poets (bear the word)
Half-poets even, are still whole democrats.
Topic: Democracy
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. 4)
|
The world goes whispering to its own,
"This anguish pierces to the bone;"
And tender friends go sighing round,
"What love can ever cure this wound?"
My days go on, my days go on.
Topic: Despair
Source: De Profundis (st. 5)
|
Life treads on life, and heart on heart;
We press too close in church and mart
To keep a dream or grave apart.
Topic: Destiny
Source: A Vision of Poets (conclusion)
|
The devil's most devilish when respectable.
Topic: Devil
Source: None
|
And there my little doves did sit
With feathers softly brown
And glittering eyes that showed their right
To general Nature's deep delight.
Topic: Doves
Source: My Doves
|
Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies.
Topic: Eyes
Source: Hector in the Garden
|
Beautiful.
(in reply to her husband who had asked how she felt moments before her death.).
Topic: Famous Last Words
Source: None
|
And lilies are still lilies, pulled
By smutty hands, though spotted from their white.
Topic: Flowers
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III)
|
Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter toward the light.
Purple violets for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.
Topic: Flowers
Source: Hector in the Garden
|
Ah, ah, Cytherea! Adonis is dead.
She wept tear after tear, with the blood which was shed,--
And both turned into flowers for the earth's garden-close;
Her tears, to the wind-flower,--his blood, to the rose.
Topic: Flowers
Source: Lament for Adonis (st. 6)
|
The flower-girl's prayer to buy roses and pinks,
Held out in the smoke, like stars by day.
Topic: Flowers
Source: The Soul's Travelling
|
Yet here's eglantine,
Here's ivy!--take them as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul their roots are left in mine.
Topic: Flowers
Source: Trans. from the Portuguese (XLIV)
|
And that dismal cry rose slowly
And sank slowly through the air,
Full of spirit's melancholy
And eternity's despair!
And they heart the words it said--
Pan is dead! great Pan is dead!
Pan, Pan is dead!
Topic: Gods
Source: The Dead Pan
|
At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.
Topic: Grammar
Source: None
|
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.
Topic: Grief
Source: Sonnets--Exaggeration
|
Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not
More grief than ye can weep for. That is well--
That is light grieving!
Topic: Grief
Source: Tears
|
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 God-light.
Topic: Heaven
Source: Sonnet--Futurity with the Departed
|
That headlong ivy! not a leaf will grow
But thinking of a wreath, . . .
I like such ivy; bold to leap a height
'Twas strong to climb! as good to grow on graves
As twist about a thyrsus; pretty too
(And that's not ill) when twisted round a comb.
Topic: Ivy
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II)
|
Wall must get the weather stain
Before they grow the ivy.
Topic: Ivy
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VIII)
|
Capacity for joy
Admits temptation.
Topic: Joy
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 703)
|
Thy lips which spake wrong counsel, I kiss close.
Topic: Kisses
Source: Drama of Exile (sc. Farther on, etc., l. 992)
|
I was betrothed that day;
I wore a troth kiss on my lips I could not give away.
Topic: Kisses
Source: Lay of the Brown Rosary (pt. II)
|
First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since it grew more clean and white.
Topic: Kisses
Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese (sonnet XXXVIII)
|
The music soars within the little lark,
And the lark soars.
Topic: Larks
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III, l. 155)
|
And lilies are still lilies, pulled
By smutty hands, though spotted from their white.
Topic: Lilies
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III)
|
. . . Purple lilies Dante blew
To a larger bubble with his prophet breath.
Topic: Lilies
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VII)
|
And lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to lover.
Topic: Lilies
Source: A Flower in a Letter
|
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.
Topic: Lilies
Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese
|
I wish I were the lily's leaf
To fade upon that bosom warm,
Content to wither, pale and brief,
The trophy of thy paler form.
Topic: Lilies
Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese
|
You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
Topic: Love
Source: None
|
Who so loves believes the impossible.
Topic: Love
Source: None
|
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.
Topic: Love
Source: None
|
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.
Topic: Love
Source: None
|
The man, most man, works best for men: and, if most man indeed, he gets his manhood plainest from his soul.
Topic: Men
Source: None
|
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.
Topic: Music
Source: A Musical Instrument
|
The large white owl that with eye is blind,
That hath sate for years in the old tree hollow,
Is carried away in a gust of wind.
Topic: Owls
Source: Isobel's Child (st. 19)
|
