Barrett Browning Love Quotes

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

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 candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 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.

You were made perfectly to be loved and surely I have loved you in the idea of you my whole life long.

Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.

Who so loves believes the impossible.

Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain

And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat... or a girl?

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only. Do not say, 'I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'— For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. If Thou Must Love Me

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me?

Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!

You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything.

OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.

Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of they soul Move still, oh, still, beside me...

But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,-- And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars.

Love doesn't make the world go round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile!

I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use

O Life, How oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough, Enough of life in so much! — here's a cause For rupture; — herein we must break with Life, Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!' — And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes And think all ended. — Then, Life calls to us In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, Above us, or below us, or around . . Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's, Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed To own our compensations than our griefs: Still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life.

The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes.

I shall but love thee bitter after death

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak, And placed it by thee on a golden throne, -- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me...-toll The silver iterance!

Thou comest! all is said without a word.

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.

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.

I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

Pomegranates you may cut deep down the middle and see into, but not hearts,—so why should I try and speak?

His answer was - not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of me - but simply that he loved me - he met argument with fact. He told me - that with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by, & that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman - that he loved now for the first time & the last.

The great chasm between the thing I say, & the thing I would say, wd be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

I think of thee!-my thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines, about a tree... Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee Who art dearer, better!

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

Why, conquering May prove as lordly and complete a thing In lifting upward, as in crushing low! And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword To one who lifts him from the bloody earth, Even so, Belovëd, I at last record, Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth, I rise above abasement at the word. Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth!

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 curvèd point,---what bitter wrong 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 Rather on earth, Belovèd,---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.

I love to read, but all through school I hated it when books were pulled apart and analyzed. Winnie-the-pooh as a political allegory, that sort of thing. It never really worked for me. There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her that when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment." 'The Winter Sea

I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young; And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-- Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there, The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

The face of all the world is changed, I think Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Unlike we are, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies... Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine... What hast though to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer...

I think of thee!—-my thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines, about a tree, Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see Except the straggling green which hides the wood. Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should, Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee Drop heavily down,—-burst, shattered, everywhere! Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee And breathe within thy shadow a new air, I do not think of thee—-I am too near thee.

Her thoughts immediately brought to mind a line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “I shall but love thee better after death.” Some pains are sweet.

Guess now who holds thee?” — “Death,” I said. But, there, The silver answer rang, — “Not Death, but Love.” — 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.

Because of you. I fell in love with you, Alexis Brown, and I don’t want to lose you over a glass of champagne.

Is it 'the cruellest cut of all' when you talk of infinite kindness, yet attribute such villainy to me?

While I throw off the ceremony, I hold the faster to the kindness.

Though Robert always calls me Ba, and thinks it the prettiest name in the world! which is a proof, you will say, not only of blind love but of deaf love.

When men of intense reality, as all great poets must be, give their hearts to be trodden on & tied up with ribbons in turn, by men of masks, there will be torture if here is not desecration.

Miss Barrett, for her part, shrank from burdening the life of the man she loved with a responsibility so trying and perhaps so painful, and refused his unchanging devotion for his sake, not for her own.

Her very freedom from affectation and consciousness had a touch of disdain. But I liked her. I did not love her, but I felt the burning soul through all that quietness, and was not disappointed in George Sand.

An honest man's the noblest work of God." Alexander Pope Psalm 23:4 "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; 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 candle-light.~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861

but that he loved me and should to his last hour. He said that the freshness of youth had passed with him also, and that he had studied the world out of books and seen many women, yet had never loved one until he had seen me.

You have to tell us too of your dear mother — Robert is so anxious about her always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and has to talk of you instead of to you.

& if some natures have to be refined by the sun, & some by the furnace (the less genial ones--) both means are to be recognized as good; . . . however different in pleasurableness & painfulness, & tho' furnace-fire leaves scorched streaks upon the fruit--.

I love and think of you always. Fancy Flush being taken in the light of a rival by baby! Oh, baby was quite jealous the other day, and strugggled and kicked to get to me because he saw Flush leaning his pretty head on my lap. There’s a great strife for privileges between those two.

Mr. Browning knew that he was asking to be allowed to take charge of an invalid’s life — believed indeed that she was even worse than was really the case, and that she was hopelessly incapacitated from ever standing on her feet — but was sure enough of his love to regard that as no obstacle.

As to politics, you know you have all put me in the corner because I stand up for universal suffrage, and am weak enough to fancy that seven millions and a half of Frenchmen have some right to an opinion on their own affairs. It’s really fatal in this world to be consequent — it leads one into damnable errors. So I shall not say much more at present. You must bear with me — dear Miss Bayley and all of you — and believe of me, if I am ever so wrong, that I do at least pray from my soul, ‘May the right prevail!’ — loving right, truth, justice, and the people through whatever mistakes.

I never gave a lock of hair away To a man, Dearest, except this to thee, Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully I ring out to the full brown length and say “Take it.”  My day of youth went yesterday; My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee, Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree, As girls do, any more: it only may Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears, Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside Through sorrow’s trick.  I thought the funeral-shears Would take this first, but Love is justified,— Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years, The kiss my mother left here when she died.

Oh yes! I confess to loving Florence and to having associated with it the idea of home. My child was born here, and here I have been very happy and well. Yet we shall not live in Florence — we are steady to our Paris plan. We must visit Rome next winter, and in the spring we shall go to Paris viâ London;

He has resolved that I shall not miss the offices of father, brother, friend, nor the tenderness and sympathy of them all. And this man is called a mere man of the world, and would be called so rightly if the world were a place for angels. I shall love him dearly and gratefully to my last breath; we both shall....

I had begun such a letter — when, by the plan of going to Little Bookham, my plans were all hurried forward — changed — driven prematurely into action, and the last hours of agitation and deep anguish — for it was the deepest of its kind, to leave Wimpole Street and those whom I tenderly loved — so would not admit of my writing or thinking:

Forgive me. I am shy by nature:--& by position & experience, . . . by having had my nerves shaken to excess, & by leading a life of such seclusion, . . . by these things together & by others besides, I have appeared shy & ungrateful to you. Only not mistrustful. You could not mean to judge me so. Mistrustful people do not write as I write, . . . surely!

My dearest sisters will be very grieved if we don’t go to England, and yet how can I even try to persuade my husband back into the scene of old associations where he would feel so much pain? Do I not know what I myself should suffer in some places? And he loved his mother with all his power of loving, which is deeper and more passionate than love is with common men.

love Italy — I love my Florence. I love that ‘hole of a place,’ as Father Prout called it lately — with all its dust, its cobwebs, its spiders even, I love it, and with somewhat of the kind of blind, stupid, respectable, obstinate love which people feel when they talk of ‘beloved native lands.’ I feel this for Italy, by mistake for England. Florence is my chimney-corner, where I can sulk and be happy.

But the personal feeling is nearer with most of us than the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been so accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that room, that while my heart was eating itself, their love for me was consoled, and at last the evil grew scarcely perceptible. It was no want of love in them, and quite natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole.

For those who are still nearer to me, I have no heart to speak of them, loving them as I do and must to the end, whatever that end may be; but my dearest sisters write often to me — never let me miss their affection. I am quite well again, and strong, and Robert and I go out after tea in a wandering walk to sit in the Loggia and look at the Perseus, or, better still, at the divine sunsets on the Arno, turning it to pure gold under the bridges.

I wanted to make a full letter of it; and Robert always says that it’s the bane of a correspondence to make a full letter a condition of writing at all. But so much I had to tell you! while the mere outline of facts you had from others, I knew. Which is just said that you may forgive us both, and believe that we think of you and love you, yes, and talk of you, even when we don’t write to you, and that we shall write to you for the future more regularly, indeed.

Mind, if ever I go to England I shall have no heart to go out of a very dark corner. I shall just see you and that’s all. It’s only Robert who is a patriot now, of us two. England, what with the past and the present, is a place of bitterness to me, bitter enough to turn all her seas round to wormwood! Airs and hearts, all are against me in England; yet don’t let me be ungrateful. No love is forgotten or less prized, certainly not yours. Only I’m a citizeness of the world now, you see, and float loose.

Little Pedlingtonism’? No, indeed. I love truth and justice, or I try to love truth and justice, more than any Plato’s or Shakespeare’s country. I certainly do not love the egotism of England, nor wish to love it. I class England among the most immoral nations in respect to her foreign politics. And her ‘National Defence’ cry fills me with disgust. But this by no means proves that I have adopted another country — no, indeed! In fact, patriotism in the narrow sense is a virtue which will wear out, sooner or later, everywhere

I took Wilson with me. I had courage to keep the secret to my sisters for their sakes, though I will tell you in strict confidence that it was known to them potentially, that is, the attachment and engagement were known, the necessity remaining that, for stringent reasons affecting their own tranquillity, they should be able to say at last, ‘We were not instructed in this and this.’ The dearest, fondest, most affectionate of sisters they are to me, and if the sacrifice of a life, or of all prospect of happiness, would have worked any lasting good to them, it should have been made even in the hour I left them. I knew that by the anguish I suffered in it. But a sacrifice, without good to anyone — I shrank from it. And also, it was the sacrifice of two. And he, as you say, had done everything for me, had loved me for reasons which had helped to weary me of myself, loved me heart to heart persistently — in spite of my own will — drawn me back to life and hope again when I had done with both. My life seemed to belong to him and to none other at last, and I had no power to speak a word. Have faith in me, my dearest friend, till you can know him.

Tell me, have you read Mr. Dickens’s ‘America;’ and what is your thought of it like? If I were an American, it would make me rabid, and certain of the free citizens are furious, I understand, while others ‘speak peace and ensue it,’ admire as much of the book as deserves any sort of admiration, and attribute the blameable parts to the prejudices of the party with whom the writer ‘fell in,’ and not to a want of honesty or brotherhood in his own intentions. I admire Mr. Dickens as an imaginative writer, and I love the Americans — I cannot possibly admire or love this book. Does Mr. Martin? Do you?

Leaving love behind is always terrible, but it was not all love that I left, and there was relief in the state of mind with which I threw myself on the sofa at Dieppe — yes, indeed. Robert felt differently from me for once, as was natural, for it had been pure joy to him with his family and his friends, and I do believe he would have been capable of never leaving England again, had such an arrangement been practicable for us on some accounts. Oh England! I love and hate it at once. Or rather, where love of country ought to be in the heart, there is the mark of the burning iron in mine, and the depth of the scar shows the depth of the root of it.

while dearest Miss Mitford’s letters from the deathbed of her father make my heart ache as surely almost as the post comes. There is nothing more various in character, nothing which distinguishes one human being from another more strikingly, than the expression of feeling, the manner in which it influences the outward man. If I were in her circumstances, I should sit paralysed — it would be impossible to me to write or to cry. And she, who loves and feels with the intensity of a nature warm in everything, seems to turn to sympathy by the very instinct of grief, and sits at the deathbed of her last relative, writing there, in letter after letter, every symptom, physical or moral —

My friend is not "mistrustful" of me, no, because she don't fear I shall make mainprize of the stray cloaks & umbrellas down-stairs, or turn an article for "Colburn's" on her sayings & doings up-stairs--but, spite of that, she does mistrust . . . so mistrust my common sense; nay, uncommon and dramatic-poet's sense, if I am put on asserting it!--all which pieces of mistrust I could detect, and catch struggling, and pin to death in a moment, and put a label on, with name, genus & species, just like a horrible entomologist; only I wo'n't, because the first visit of the North wind will carry the whole tribe into the Red Sea--and those horns and tails and scalewings are best forgotten altogether.

Certainly you are disinterested about America, and, of course, all of us who have hearts and heads must feel the sympathy of a greater nation to be more precious than a thick purse. Still, it is not just and dignified, this vantage ground of American pirates. Liking the ends and motives, one disapproves the means. Yes, even you do; and if I were an American I should dissent with still more emphasis. It should be made a point of honour with the nation, if there is no point of law against the re publishers. For my own part, I have every possible reason to thank and love America; she has been very kind to me, and the visits we receive here from delightful and cordial persons of that country have been most gratifying to us.

The fact is, nobody would have known from looking. An outsider walking past my cubicle that morning would have seen a petite woman of thirty-four with long, light brown hair pulled back in a barrette, neat and orderly-looking. Closer inspection would have suggested a perfectionistic, polished exterior, a careful attention to detail: a young woman with well-manicured nails and black leggings and Italian shoes; a daily list of things to do sitting on the desk, written in perfect print, several items already neatly ticked off; a workspace so compulsively tidy that one of my staff writers used to say you could fly a plane over my desk and it would look like a map of the Midwest, everything at perfect right angles. Colleagues saw me as smart and introspective, a little reserved maybe, and a paragon of efficiency at work: organized, professional, productive.

Death has the luminous side when we know how to look; but the rust of time, the touch of age, is hideous and revolting to me, and I never see it, by even a line’s breadth, in the face of any I love, without pain and recoil of nature. I have a worse than womanly weakness about that class of subjects. Death is a face-to-face intimacy; age, a thickening of the mortal mask between souls. So I hate it; put it far from me. Why talk of age, when it’s just an appearance, an accident, when we are all young in soul and heart? We don’t say, one to another, ‘You are freckled in the forehead to-day,’ or ‘There’s a yellow shade in your complexion.’ Leave those disagreeable trifles. I, for my part, never felt younger. Did you, I wonder? To be sure not. Also, I have a gift in my eyes, I think, for scarcely ever does it strike me that anybody is altered, except my child, for instance, who certainly is larger than when he was born.

The above letter was written only three days before the tragedy which utterly wrecked Elizabeth Barrett’s life for a time, and cast a deep shadow over it which never wholly passed away — the death of her brother Edward through drowning. On July 11, he and two friends had gone for a sail in a small boat. They did not return when they were expected, and presently a rumour came that a boat, answering in appearance to theirs, had been seen to founder in Babbicombe Bay; but it was not until three days later that final confirmation of the disaster was obtained by the discovery of the bodies. What this blow meant to the bereaved sister cannot be told: the horror with which she refers to it, even at a distance of many years, shows how deeply it struck. It was the loss of the brother whom she loved best of all; and she had the misery of thinking that it was to attend on her that he had come to the place where he met his death.

You asked of Ferdinando. Peni’s attachment for Ferdinando is undiminished. Ferdinando can’t be found fault with, even in gentleness, without a burst of tears on Peni’s part. Lately I ventured to ask not to be left quite alone in the house on certain occasions; and though I spoke quite kindly, there was Peni in tears, assuring me that we ought to have another servant to open the door, for that ‘poor Ferdinando had a great deal too much work’! When I ventured to demur to that, the next charge was, ‘plainly I did not love Ferdinando as much as I loved Penini,’ which I could not deny; and then with passionate sobs Peni said that ‘I was very unjust indeed.’ ‘Indeed, indeed, dear mama, you are unjust! Ferdinando does everything for you, and I do nothing, except tease you, and even’ (sobbing) ‘I am sometimes a very naughty boy.’ I had to mop up his tears with my pocket-handkerchief, and excuse myself as well as I could from the moral imputation of loving Peni better than Ferdinando.

I am thinking, lifting up my pen, what I can write to you which is likely to be interesting to you. After all I come to chaos and silence, and even old night — it is growing so dark. I live in London, to be sure, and except for the glory of it I might live in a desert, so profound is my solitude and so complete my isolation from things and persons without. I lie all day, and day after day, on the sofa, and my windows do not even look into the street. To abuse myself with a vain deceit of rural life I have had ivy planted in a box, and it has flourished and spread over one window, and strikes against the glass with a little stroke from the thicker leaves when the wind blows at all briskly. Then I think of forests and groves; it is my triumph when the leaves strike the window pane, and this is not a sound like a lament. Books and thoughts and dreams (almost too consciously dreamed, however, for me — the illusion of them has almost passed) and domestic tenderness can and ought to leave nobody lamenting. Also God’s wisdom, deeply steeped in His love, is as far as we can stretch out our hands.

You see we are in London after all, and poor Sidmouth left afar. I am almost inclined to say ‘poor us’ instead of ‘poor Sidmouth.’ But I dare say I shall soon be able to see in my dungeon, and begin to be amused with the spiders. Half my soul, in the meantime, seems to have stayed behind on the seashore, which I love more than ever now that I cannot walk on it in the body. London is wrapped up like a mummy, in a yellow mist, so closely that I have had scarcely a glimpse of its countenance since we came. Well, I am trying to like it all very much, and I dare say that in time I may change my taste and my senses — and succeed. We are in a house large enough to hold us, for four months, at the end of which time, if the experiment of our being able to live in London succeed, I believe that papa’s intention is to take an unfurnished house and have his furniture from Ledbury. You may wonder at me, but I wish that were settled so, and now. I am satisfied with London, although I cannot enjoy it. We are not likely, in the case of leaving it, to return to Devonshire, and I should look with weary eyes to another strangership and pilgrimage even among green fields that know not these fogs.

Recipe for a Perfect Wife, the Novel INGREDIENTS 3 cups editors extraordinaire: Maya Ziv, Lara Hinchberger, Helen Smith 2 cups agent-I-couldn’t-do-this-without: Carolyn Forde (and the Transatlantic Literary Agency) 1½ cup highly skilled publishing teams: Dutton US, Penguin Random House Canada (Viking) 1 cup PR and marketing wizards: Kathleen Carter (Kathleen Carter Communications), Ruta Liormonas, Elina Vaysbeyn, Maria Whelan, Claire Zaya 1 cup women of writing coven: Marissa Stapley, Jennifer Robson, Kate Hilton, Chantel Guertin, Kerry Clare, Liz Renzetti ½ cup author-friends-who-keep-me-sane: Mary Kubica, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Amy E. Reichert, Colleen Oakley, Rachel Goodman, Hannah Mary McKinnon, Rosey Lim ½ cup friends-with-talents-I-do-not-have: Dr. Kendra Newell, Claire Tansey ¼ cup original creators of the Karma Brown Fan Club: my family and friends, including my late grandmother Miriam Christie, who inspired Miriam Claussen; my mom, who is a spectacular cook and mother; and my dad, for being the wonderful feminist he is 1 tablespoon of the inner circle: Adam and Addison, the loves of my life ½ tablespoon book bloggers, bookstagrammers, authors, and readers: including Andrea Katz, Jenny O’Regan, Pamela Klinger-Horn, Melissa Amster, Susan Peterson, Kristy Barrett, Lisa Steinke, Liz Fenton 1 teaspoon vintage cookbooks: particularly the Purity Cookbook, for the spark of inspiration 1 teaspoon loyal Labradoodle: Fred Licorice Brown, furry writing companion Dash of Google: so I could visit the 1950s without a time machine METHOD: Combine all ingredients into a Scrivener file, making sure to hit Save after each addition.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous sonnet. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways....

For perhaps a quarter of an hour they stayed like that while he stroked her head, slender neck, and delicate ears. As he did, joy bubbled through him like a fountain of light, and his mind rang with the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous sonnet. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways....

Let the world's sharpness like a clasping knife Shut in upon itself and do no harm In this close hand of Love, now soft and warm, And let us hear no sound of human strife After the click of the shutting. - Sonnet XXIV

By slow degrees it broke on her slow sense… That she too in that Eden of delight Was out of place, and, like the silly kid, Still did most mischief where she meant most love. A thought enough to make a woman mad. Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh

That man loves you. I have never seen anyone look at you like that before, almost as if he couldn't get enough of seeing you. It almost made me jealous of the intensity, and I am a big married woman." "Of over forty years," her father tacked on, "and I do look at you with love, dear. It's just that my eyes are a fading watery brown and Enrique's are green. Women seem to like that sort of color." Colleen