December 2011
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Sonnet XLIII - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 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 every day’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 with a passion put to use In my...
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November 2011
2 posts
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October 2011
8 posts
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Iseult of Brittany
So delicate my hands, and long, They might have been my pride. And there were those to make them song Who for their touch had died. Too frail to cup a heart within, Too soft to hold the free- How long these lovely hands have been A bitterness to me!
- Dorothy Parker
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September 2011
4 posts
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August 2011
7 posts
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Silence
There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea, Or in wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently, But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground: But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of...
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“I remember, I remember
The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their...”
– Thomas Hood, I Remember, I Remember
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“Cast me upon some naked shore
Where I may tracke
Onely the print of some sad...”
– William Habington, Castara: III
July 2011
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June 2011
3 posts
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May 2011
12 posts
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When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charactry, Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature...
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The Laboratory
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy— Which is the poison to poison her, prithee? He is with her; and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!...
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Fragment
Yes I will take a cheerful tone And feign to share their heartless glee, But I would rather weep alone Than laugh amid their revelry.
- Anne Brontë
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Echo
Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years. O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet, Whose wakening should have been in Paradise, Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet; Where thirsting longing eyes Watch the slow...
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“At times I almost dream
I too have spent a life the sages’ way,
And...”
– Robert Browning, Paracelsus - II (excerpt)
April 2011
34 posts
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I Sit Beside the Fire and Think
I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen, of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were, with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall never see. For still there are so many things that I have...
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