Quote#Dreams
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
Quote byElizabeth Barrett Browning · 1806–1861
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "A Woman's Shortcomings", st. 5, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 60 (Oct. 1846), p. 489; reprinted in Poems (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), vol. 2, p. 399.
English (original)
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past— Oh, never call it loving!
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
More from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet From out the hallelujahs, sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy dead in silence like to death; Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe, Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet—
By thunders of white silence.
Or from Browning some "Pomegranate," which, if cut deep down the middle, Shows a heart within blood-tinctured, of a veined humanity.