My letters-- all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night,
This said,--he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand...a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!--this...the paper's light...
Said, iDear, I love thee;/i and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, iI am thine/i--and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this...O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

(C) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
03/17/2017


Best Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

• Xxx
• Sonnet 24 - Let The Worlds Sharpness, Like A Clasping Knife
• Sonnet 21 - Say Over Again, And Yet Once Over Again
• Sonnet 06 - Go From Me. Yet I Feel That I Shall Stand
• Sonnet 26 - I Lived With Visions For My Company
• The Cry Of The Children
• A Musical Instrument
• The Best Thing In The World
• Sonnet 10 - Yet, Love, Mere Love, Is Beautiful Indeed
• Sonnet 42 - my Future Will Not Copy Fair My Past
• Sonnet Ii
• Sonnet 27 - My Own Beloved, Who Hast Lifted Me
• Sonnet 35 - If I Leave All For Thee, Wilt Thou Exchange
• Bianca Among The Nightingales
• Grief
• Sonnet 36 - When We Met First And Loved, I Did Not Build
• Sonnet 25 - A Heavy Heart, Beloved, Have I Borne
• Sonnet 03 - Unlike Are We, Unlike, O Princely Heart!
• Sonnet 11 - And Therefore If To Love Can Be Desert
• Sonnet 09 - Can It Be Right To Give What I Can Give?
• Sonnet 18 - I Never Gave A Lock Of Hair Away