Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Lady’s Yes
” Yes!” I answered you last night;
” No!” this morning, Sir, I say!
Colours, seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day.
When the tabors played their best,
Lamps above, and laughs below–
Love me sounded like a jest,
Fit for Yes or fit for No!
Call me false, or call me free–
Vow, whatever light may shine,
No man on your face shall see
Any grief for change on mine.
Yet the sin is on us both–
Time to dance is not to woo–
Wooer light makes fickle troth–
Scorn of me recoils on you!
Learn to win a lady’s faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
To Flush, My Dog
Loving friend, the gift of one,
Who, her own true faith, hath run,
Through thy lower nature;
Be my benediction said
With my hand upon thy head,
Gentle fellow-creature!
Like a lady’s ringlets brown,
Flow thy silken ears adown
Either side demurely,
Of thy silver-suited breast
Shining out from all the rest
Of thy body purely.
Darkly brown thy body is,
Till the sunshine, striking this,
Alchemize its dulness,–
When the sleek curls manifold
Flash all over into gold,
With a burnished fulness.
Underneath my stroking hand,
Startled eyes of hazel bland
Grief
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught 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 silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted 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:
