10 With holier light! that thou to woman's claim And man's, mightst join beside the angel's grace Of a pure genius sanctified from blame, Till child and maiden pressed to thine embrace To kiss upon thy lips a stainless fame.
1844
To George Sand
A Recognition
True genius, but true woman! dost deny The woman's nature with a manly scorn, And break away the gauds0 and armlets worn ornaments By weaker women in captivity?
5 Ah, vain denial! that revolted cry Is sobbed in by a woman's voice forlorn,? Thy woman's hair, my sister, all unshorn Floats back dishevelled strength in agony, Disproving thy man's name: and while before
10 The world thou burnest in a poet-fire, We see thy woman-heart beat evermore Through the large flame. Beat purer, heart, and higher, Till God unsex thee on the heavenly shore Where unincarnate0 spirits purely aspire! disembodied
1844
1. Pen name of the French Romantic novelist Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant (1804?1876), famous for her unconventional ideas and behavior. Barrett Browning discovered Sand's writing while an invalid, 'a prisoner,' and asserts that Sand, together with Balzac, 'kept the colour in my life.' A defender of Sand's genius to less-sympathetic friends critical of Sand's morality, Barrett Browning writes to her friend Mary Russell Mitford (a novelist and dramatist) that Sand 'is eloquent as a fallen angel.. . A true woman of genius!?but of a womanhood tired of itself, and scorned by her, while she bears it burning above her head.'
2. A Roman spectacle that might include such entertainment as fights between humans and lions.
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108 4 / ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
From Sonnets from the Portuguese
21
Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem 'a cuckoo song,'1 as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
5 Valley and wood, without her cuckoo strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Beloved, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit voice, in that doubt's pain
Cry, 'Speak once more?thou lovest!' Who can fear
io Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me?toll
The silver iterance!0?only minding, Dear, repetitionTo love me also in silence with thy soul.
22 When our two souls stand up erect and strong,
Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher,
Until the lengthening wings break into fire
At either curved point?what bitter wrong
5 Can the earth do to us, that we should not long
Be here contented? Think. In mounting higher,
The angels would press on us and aspire
To drop some golden orb of perfect song
Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay
io Rather on earth, Beloved,?where the unfit
Contrarious moods of men recoil away
And isolate pure spirits, and permit
A place to stand and love in for a day,
With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.
32 The first time that the sun rose on thine oath
To love me, I looked forward to the moon
To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon
