Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/180

it not interspersed with! What utterances of truth and of humanity are imbedded in its pages! How few Englishmen would have uttered, even if they had thought them, such pregnant words as these:—

The English have a scornful, insular way
Of calling the French light. The levity
Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;
For, say a foolish thing but oft enough
(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,
Men get opinions, as boys learn to spell,
By reiteration chiefly) the same thing
Shall pass at last for absolutely wise.

Another passage alluding to eminent women that has been quoted often, and is not yet trite, is:—

How dreary 'tis for women to sit still
On winter nights by solitary fires,
And hear the nations praising them far off.

It is followed by these less-known but equally pathetic lines,—

⁠To sit alone
And think, for comfort, how, that very night,
Affianced lovers, leaning face to face,
With sweet half-listenings for each other's breath,
Are reading haply from some page of ours,
To pause with a thrill, as if their cheeks had touched,
When such a stanza, level to their mood,
Seems floating their own thoughts out—"So I feel
For thee." "And I, for thee: this poet knows
What everlasting love is!". . . .

⁠To have our books
Appraised by love, associated with love,
While we sit loveless! it is hard, you think?
At least, 'tis mournful.

Here, too, is true philosophy—

All men are possible heroes: every age
Heroic in proportion. . . .