He Giveth His Beloved Sleep

Be blessed, my beloved, and sleep.




It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Psalm 127:2



The Sleep
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Of all the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward unto souls afar,
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this--
     "He giveth His beloved, sleep"?

Time To Dance Is Not To Woo

The feminism that I hear in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems seems to me to be both much more honest and infinitely more appealing than the brand of feminism that rules the world these days. It is in fact feminine, for it exalts the feminine; today's variety seems intent on destroying the whole concept of the feminine.



THE LADY'S 'YES'

'Yes,' I answered you last night;
'No,' this morning, sir, I say:
Colors seen by candle-light
Will not look the same by day.

Like A Rhythmic Fate Sublime

In the final stanza of the prologue to the Rhyme of the Dutchess May, Elizabeth Barrett Browning explains exactly what she is doing with the rhymic interlude in the midst of each stanza. This is a longish poem, and the short line, "Toll slowly," disrupts the otherwise standard rhythm of all 112 verses.

The scene is that she is reading a very sad tale, a tale of death, in a churchyard, while the church bell continuously tolls for a funeral. As Browning explains in the prologue, "The solemn knell fell in with the tale of life and sin, like a rhythmic fate sublime."

Love From a Distance

The last few posts having been dedicated to sonnets, I am left with one question.

I vaguely sense why the sonnet is so well suited to themes of love, not so as to try to explain it, yet I can feel that it is a perfect fit. Love-sonnet. Sonnet-love. It just fits well.

Yet I am left with the question, why are sonnets so perfectly fitted to love from a distance?

The Ends of Being

In the years before their marriage Elizabeth Barrett wrote forty-four sonnets to Robert Browning. Although she did not want to publish them, being somewhat bashful about their extremely personal tone, he persuaded her. Still, in order to somewhat distance herself from them she gave the collection the inaccurate title of Sonnets From the Portuguese.

They are, as her husband told her, the best sonnets in English since Shakespeare. And, much more than Shakespeare's sonnets, they are a series rather than simply a collection. To some extent Shakespeare's sonnets should be read roughly in order and in context with one another. To a much greater extent Barrrett's sonnets should be read strictly in order. It is no accident

Creeping Through the Thorns

I don't normally like to post a piece of a poem without the whole. But today I will anyway. The scene in the poem is that a rich older woman had kept a garden. After her death it had been left unattended until a small child found it. Here are two stanzas from right in the middle of the poem.


from The Deserted Garden
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Oh, little thought that lady proud,
A child would watch her fair white rose,
When buried lay her whiter brows,
And silk was changed for shroud!--

The Image of God

Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Now known as wife of Robert Browning; during their lives Robert was known as the husband of Elizabeth Barrett.

Here is a little piece from her translation of Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus. Clearly she took some liberties with his work.


THE IMAGE OF GOD

Thou! art thou like to god?
(I asked this question of the glorious sun)
Thou high unwearied one,
Whose course in heat, and light, and life is run?

We Loved Her Once

Robert Browning was a great poet, but the genius of his wife so far outshone his that he should have become Robert Browning Barrett rather than her Elizabeth Barrett Browning. At the time of their famous courtship and marriage, she was the far more admired poet, but he has since taken precidence in the public mind. Oh well.

Here, as promised, E. B. Browning gives us a different perspective on love than Housman did.

This version of the poem is from the 1853 edition of her collected poems, presumably revised from the 1844 edition. Whether she made further revisions to it in the eight years she lived afterward I do not know and the library is closed so I can't go look. I have seen it in somewhat varying versions but I do not know if they preceed or follow this version, nor if they indicate printers' follies. However I like this version better.


LOVED ONCE

I classed, appraising once,
Earth's lamentable sounds, - the welladay,
The jarring yea and nay,
The fall of kisses on unanswering clay,
The sobbed farewell, the welcome mournfuller;
But all did leaven the air
With a less bitter leaven of sure despair
Than these words, 'I loved once.'

And who saith 'I loved once'?
Not angels, whose clear eyes, love, love, forsee,
Love through eternity,
Who, by To Love, do apprehend To Be.
Not God, called Love, his noble crown-name casting
A light too broad for blasting:
The great God changing not from everlasting,
Saith never, 'I loved once.'

Nor ever the 'Loved once'?
Dost THOU say Victim-Christ, misprized friend!
The cross and curse may rend;
But, having loved, thou lovest to the end!
It is man's saying, - man's. Too weak to move
One sphered star above,
Man desecrates the eternal God-word Love
With his No More and Once.

How say ye, 'We loved once,'
Blasphemers? Is your earth not cold enow,
Mourners, without that snow?
Ah, friends, and would ye wrong each other so?
And could ye say of some, whose love is known,
Whose prayers have met your own,
Whose tears have fallen for you, whose smiles have shone,
Such words, 'We loved them once'?

Could ye, 'We loved her once,'
Say calm of me, sweet friends, when out of sight?
When hearts of better right
Stand in between me and your happy light?
And when, as flowers kept too long in the shade,
Ye find my colors fade,
And all that is not love in me decayed?
Such words, - ye loved me once!

Could ye, 'We loved her once,'
Say cold of me, when further put away
In earth's sepulchral clay?
When mute the lips which depricate to-day?
Not so! Not then--least then! When Life is shriven,
And death's full joy is given,
Of those who sit and love you up in Heaven,
Say not 'We loved them once.'

Say never, ye loved once:
God is too near above, the grave, beneath,
And all our moments go
Too quickly past our souls, for saying so.
The mysteries of Life and Death avenge
Affections light of range.
There comes no change to justify that change,
Whatever comes, - Loved once!

And yet that word of once
Is humanly acceptive. Kings have said,
Shaking a discrowned head,
'We ruled once,' - dotards, 'We once taught and led;'
Cripples once danced i' the vines; and bards approved,
Were once by scornings, moved:
But love strikes one hour - LOVE! Those never loved
Who dream that they loved ONCE.