Among all female poets of the English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical esteem or more admired for the independence and courage of her views than Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861). During the years of her marriage to Robert Browning, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband. And when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction. A framed portrait of Barrett Browning hung in the bedroom of Emily Dickinson, whose life had been transfigured by the poetry of “that Foreign Lady.” So highly regarded had Elizabeth Browning become by 1850, the year of Wordsworth’s death, that she was prominently mentioned as a possible successor to the poet laureateship. The first four lines of the poem “How do I Love Thee” are among the most famous lines in English poetry.

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 everyday’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 breadth,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

***

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1857 – 1909) was born in London and became of the most accomplished lyric poets of the Victorian era. He was a preeminent symbol of rebellion against the conservative values of his time, writing poems with explicit and often pathological sexual themes. His most important collection of poetry is Poems and Ballads (1866). I present to you, “Love and Sleep” by Swinburne.

Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head.
Smooth-skinned and dark,
with bare throat made to bite.
Too wan for blushing
and too warm for white,
but perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said –
I wish not what, saving one word – delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
and her body pasture to mine eyes;
The long lithe arms hotter hands than fire,
the quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south.
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul’s desire.

***

By the time the American poet Sara Teasdale was born (1884), the artistic and literary era known as the “Romantic Period” was officially over by three decades. But the flame of Romanticism, with its glorification of nature, emotions and passion continued to burn bright. Sara Teasdale was a late torch bearer of what might be called the “late” Romantic period. Born in St. Louis, Missouri to a wealthy family. Teasdale wrote seven books of poetry in her lifetime and was widely admired for her well-crafted lyrical poetry which centered on a woman’s changing perspectives on beauty, love, and death. Many of her poems chart developments in her own life, from her experiences as a sheltered young woman in St. Louis, to a successful yet increasingly uneasy life as a writer in New York City, to depression and disillusionment that would end her life in suicide in 1933.  “The Kiss” is one of her most moving love poem.

Before you kissed me,
only the winds of heaven had kissed me
and the tenderness of rain.
Now you have come,
how can I care for kisses
like theirs again?

I sought the sea –
she sent her winds to meet me.
They surged about me,
singing of the south.
I turned my head away to keep still holy,
your kiss upon my mouth.

And swift sweet rains of shining April weather,
found not my lips where living kisses are;
I bowed my head lest they put out my glory
as rain puts out a star.

I am my love’s and he is mine forever,
sealed with a seal and safe forevermore –
Think you that I could let a beggar enter
where a king stood before?