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World's use is cold, world's love is vain,
World's cruelty is bitter bane;
But pain is not the fruit of pain.
Topic: Pain
Source: A Vision of Poets (st. 146)
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Pansies for ladies all--(I wis
That none who wear such brooches miss
A jewel in the mirror).
Topic: Pansies
Source: A Flower in a Letter
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I worked with patience which means almost power.
Topic: Patience
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III, l. 205)
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And I must bear
What is ordained with patience, being aware
Necessity doth front the universe
With an invincible gesture.
Topic: Patience
Source: Prometheus Bound
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"There's nothing great
Nor small," has said a poet of our day,
Whose voice will ring beyond the curfew of eve
And not be thrown out by the matin's bell.
Topic: Poets
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VII), probably referring to Emerson's "Epigram to History", "There is no great and
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O brave poets, keep back nothing;
Nor mix falsehood with the whole!
Look up Godward! speak the truth in
Worthy song from earnest soul!
Hold, in high poetic duty,
Truest Truth the fairest Beauty.
Topic: Poets
Source: Dead Pan (st. 39)
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God's prophets of the Beautiful,
These Poets were.
Topic: Poets
Source: Vision of Poets (l. 161)
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Every wish
Is like a prayer--with God.
Topic: Prayer
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II)
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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.
Topic: Prayer
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II)
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Hope, he called, belief
In God,--work, worship . . . therefore let us pray!
Topic: Prayer
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III)
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What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushed toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art's life--and where we live, we suffer and toil.
Topic: Progress
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. IV, l. 1,150)
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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.
Topic: Religion
Source: Comfort
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Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, By reiteration chiefly.
Topic: Repetition
Source: None
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Since when was genius found respectable?
Topic: Respect
Source: None
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The devil's most devilish when respectable.
Topic: Respect
Source: None
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You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
Topic: Romance
Source: None
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If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say, I love her for her smile . . . her look . . . her way Of speaking gently . . . for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and, certes, brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day- For these things in themselves, Beloved, may be changed, or change for thee- and love so wrought, May be unwrought so.
Topic: Romance
Source: None
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This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck
Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
Topic: Roses
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II)
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'Twas a yellow rose,
By that south window of the little house,
My cousin Romney gathered with his hand
On all my birthdays, for me. save the last;
And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough,
For roses to stay after.
Topic: Roses
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VI)
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O rose, who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,--
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
Topic: Roses
Source: A Dead Rose
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Red as a rose of Harpocrate.
Topic: Roses
Source: Isabel's Child
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And thus, what can we do,
Poor rose and poet too,
Who both antedate our mission
In an unprepared season?
Topic: Roses
Source: A Lay of the Early Rose
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"For if I wait," said she,
"Till time for roses be,--
For the moss-rose and the musk-rose,
Maiden-blush and royal-dusk rose,--
"What glory then for me
In such a company?--
Roses plenty, roses plenty
And one nightingale for twenty?"
Topic: Roses
Source: A Lay of the Early Rose
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You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it, what matter?
Topic: Roses
Source: Lord Walter's Wife
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A white rosebud for a guerdon.
Topic: Roses
Source: Romance of the Swan's Nest
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Many a crown
Covers bald foreheads.
Topic: Royalty
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 754)
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How joyously the young sea-mew
Lay dreaming on the waters blue,
Whereon our little bark had thrown
A little shade, the only one;
But shadows ever man pursue.
Topic: Sea Birds
Source: The Sea-Mew
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There, Shakespeare, on whose forehead climb
The crowns o' the world. Oh, eyes sublime
With tears and laughter for all time.
Topic: Shakespeare
Source: A Vision of Poets
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How he sleepeth! having drunken
Weary childhood's mandragore,
From his pretty eyes have sunken
Pleasures to make room for more--
Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day
before.
Topic: Sleep
Source: A Child Asleep
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Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is.
For gift or grace, surpassing this--
"He giveth His beloved sleep."
Topic: Sleep
Source: The Sleep
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Sleep on, Baby, on the floor,
Tired of all the playing,
Sleep with smile the sweeter for
That you dropped away in!
On your curls' full roundness stand
Golden lights serenely--
One cheek, pushed out by the hand,
Folds the dimple inly.
Topic: Sleep
Source: Sleeping and Watching
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Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.
Topic: Sleep
Source: Sleeping and Watching
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Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by Death.
Topic: Suffering
Source: A Vision of Poets--Conclusion
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And friends, dear friends,--when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And gone my bier ye come to weep,
Let One, most loving of you all,
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall;
He giveth His beloved sleep."
Topic: Tears
Source: The Sleep (st. 9)
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Thank God for grace,
Ye who weep only! If, as some have done,
Ye grope tear-blinded in a desert place
And touch but tombs,--look up! Those tears will run
Soon in long rivers down the lifted face,
And leave the vision clear for stars and sun.
Topic: Tears
Source: Tears
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A woman's always younger than a man of equal years.
Topic: The sexes
Source: None
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Light tomorrow with today.
Topic: Tomorrow
Source: None
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The place is all awave with trees,
Limes, myrtles, purple-beaded,
Acacias having drunk the lees
Of the night-dew, fain headed,
And wan, grey olive-woods, which seem
The fittest foliage for a dream.
Topic: Trees
Source: An Island
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Pray, pray, thou who also weepest,--
And the drops will slacken so;
Weep, weep--and the watch thou keepest,
With a quicker count will go.
Think,--the shadow on the dial
For the nature most undone,
Marks the passing of the trial,
Proves the presence of the sun.
Topic: Trials
Source: Fourfold Aspect
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Let no one till his death be called unhappy. Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.
Topic: Unhappiness
Source: None
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Deep violets, you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal.
Topic: Violets
Source: A Flower in a Letter
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Every wish
Is like a prayer--with God.
Topic: Wishes
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II)
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You forget too much
That every creature, female as the male,
Stands single in responsible act and thought
As also in birth and death.
Topic: Women
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. II, l. 472)
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A worthless woman! mere cold clay
As all false things are! but so fair,
She takes the breath of men away
Who gaze upon her unaware:
I would not play her larcenous tricks
To have her looks!
Topic: Women
Source: Bianca among the Nightingales (st. 12)
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"Yes," I answered you last night;
"No," this morning, sir, I say:
Colors seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.
Topic: Wooing
Source: The Lady's "Yes"
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By the way,
The works of women are symbolical.
We sew, sew, prick our fingers, dull out sight,
Producing what? A pair of slippers, sir,
To put on when you're weary--or a stool
To tumble over and vex you . . . curse that stool!
Or else at best, a cushion where you lean
And sleep, and dream of something we are not,
But would be for your sake. Alas, alas!
This hurts most, this . . . that, after all, we are paid
The worth of our work, perhaps.
Topic: Work
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. I, l. 465)
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Get leave to work
In this world,--'tis the best you get at all.
Topic: Work
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. III, l. 164)
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Let no one till his death
Be called unhappy. Measure not the work
Until the day's out and the labour done.
Topic: Work
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. V, l. 78)
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Free men freely work:
Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.
Topic: Work
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. VIII, l. 784)
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In this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world,
Where all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost.
Topic: World
Source: Aurora Leigh (bk. V, l. 981)
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