Quote#Love
The cypress stood up like a church
Quote byElizabeth Barrett Browning · 1806–1861
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Last Poems (1862), "Bianca Among the Nightingales", st. 1.
English (original)
The cypress stood up like a church That night we felt our love would hold, And saintly moonlight seemed to search And wash the whole world clean as gold; The olives crystallized the vales' Broad slopes until the hills grew strong: The fireflies and the nightingales Throbbed each to either, flame and song. The nightingales, the nightingales.
— 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.
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.
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;
I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.
Thou large-brained woman and large-hearted man.