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;
Bravely, as for life and death
With a loyal gravity.

Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her, by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship's flatteries.

By your truth she shall be true
Ever true, as wives of yore
And her Yes, once said to you,
SHALL be Yes for evermore.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Victorian era, celebrated for her romantic and passionate poetry. Born in 1806, she gained early fame with her collection 'Poems' in 1844, which caught the attention of fellow poet Robert Browning. The two poets married in 1846 and lived in Italy for most of their lives. Elizabeth's most famous work, 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' explores her profound love for Robert. She died in 1861 and remains a significant figure in English literature.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Grief

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Simple Poetry

From The Souls Travelling

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Simple Poetry

Perplexed Music

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Simple Poetry

To George Sand: A Recognition

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Simple Poetry

English

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A Woman's Shortcomings

She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried,
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.

She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
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From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
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And love seeks better loving.

Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
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A Man's Requirements

I

Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.

II

Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
With its silence tender.

III

Love me with thine azure eyes,
Made for earnest grantings;
Taking colour from the skies,
Can Heaven's truth be wanting?

IV

Love me with their lids, that fall
Snow-like at first meeting;
Love me with thine heart, that all
Neighbours then see beating.

V

Love me with thine hand stretched out
Freely, open-minded:
Love me with thy loitering foot,
Hearing one behind it.

VI

Love me with thy voice, that turns
Sudden faint...

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Lord Walter's Wife

I

'But where do you go?' said the lady, while both sat under the yew,
And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue.

II

'Because I fear you,' he answered; 'because you are far too fair,
And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your golfd-coloured hair.'

III

'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone,
And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.'

IV

'Yet farewell so,' he answered; 'the sunstroke's fatal at times.
I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.

V

'Oh that,' she said, 'is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence:
If two should smell it what matter? who grumbles, and where's the pretense?

VI

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Young Love I - "Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon"

N.B. - This sequence of poems has appeared in former editions under the title of 'Love Platonic.'


I

1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Si...

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To A Lady - In Answer To A Request That I Would Write Her A Poem Upon Some Drawings That She Had Made Of Flowers In The Island Of Madeira

Fair Lady! can I sing of flowers
That in Madeira bloom and fade,
I who ne'er sate within their bowers,
Nor through their sunny lawns have strayed?
How they in sprightly dance are worn
By Shepherd-groom or May-day queen,
Or holy festal pomps adorn,
These eyes have never seen.

Yet tho' to me the pencil's art
No like remembrances can give,
Your portraits still may reach the heart
And there for gentle pleasure live;
While Fancy ranging with free scope
Shall on some lovely Alien set
A name with us endeared to hope,
To peace, or fond regret.

Still as we look with nicer care,
Some new resemblance we may trace:
A 'Heart's-ease' will perhaps be there,
A 'Speedwell' may not want its place.
And so may we, with charmed mind
Beholding w...

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A Lovers Quarrel

I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last nights rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Loves away!
Id as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermits cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go,
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We...

Robert Browning