Quotes · verified word for word in the text
Elizabeth Barrett Browning quotes
10 quotes from 1 of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s books on this site, book by book. Each quote is copied exactly from the book’s text in this site’s reader (the Project Gutenberg e-text named under each book) and links to its passage; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against that text. Quotes we could not find in a book we host are not listed.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
I seek no copy now of life’s first half: Leave here the pages with long musing curled, And write me new my future’s epigraph, New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only.
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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
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.
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white.
The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul Move still, oh, still, beside me, as they stole Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm.
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow.