The Academy of American Poets
Home | View Cart | Log In 
Subscribe | More Info 
Find a Poet or Poem
Advanced Search >
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett, an English poet of the Romantic Movement, was born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England. The oldest of twelve children, Elizabeth was the first in her family born in...
More >
FURTHER READING
Poems About Love
A Birthday
by Christina Rossetti
A Ditty
by Sir Philip Sidney
A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost
A Negro Love Song
by Paul Laurence Dunbar
I loved you first... (from Monna Innominata)
by Christina Rossetti
I wish I could remember... (from Monna Innominata)
by Christina Rossetti
In a Boat
by D.H. Lawrence
Love
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Love in a Life
by Robert Browning
Love's Philosophy
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lovers' Infiniteness
by John Donne
Meeting at Night
by Robert Browning
No, Love Is Not Dead
by Robert Desnos
She Walks in Beauty
by George Gordon Byron
The Buried Life
by Matthew Arnold
The Definition of Love
by Andrew Marvell
The Kiss
by Stephen Dunn
The Look
by Sara Teasdale
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe
The White Rose
by John Boyle O'Reilly
To Anthea Who May Command Him Any Thing
by Robert Herrick
Wooing Song
by Giles Fletcher
Adopt a Poet | Add to Notebook | E-mail to Friend | Print
Love  
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole.
Larger TypeLarger Type | Home | Help | Contact Us | Privacy Policy Copyright © 1997 - 2008 by The Academy of American Poets.