By Monte M. Korn
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
1806-1851
Robert Browning
1812-1889
If ever a marriage were made in heaven, the romance and marriage of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett was such a match.
Elizabeth Barrett was six years older than Robert Browning. She had already reconciled herself to being an old maid, her father’s housekeeper, a role she accepted because of the death of her mother.
Her father did not approve of Elizabeth’s marriage to Robert Browning. Elizabeth was not well, was not strong enough to assume the role of being a wife to Robert.
Further, her father needed her. Elizabeth was her father’s housekeeper, who ran his household and kept a watchful eye on her younger siblings while her father was away from his home on Wimpole Street.
But this marriage was made in heaven. Robert loved Elizabeth, swept her off her feet, and literally carried her away from her home on Wimpole Street in London, to their marriage and home in Italy where Robert loved Elizabeth and Elizabeth loved Robert, and they cared for each other until Elizabeth died in 1861.
There is no question that Robert did not fear death and Robert was determined to keep Elizabeth alive as long as she had the strength, determination, love of life and desire to live.
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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 every day’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 breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
If Thou Must Love Me, Let it Be for Nought...
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile--her look–her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day” –
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,–and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, –
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.
PROSPICE
By Robert Browning
Fear death? – to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle’s to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so – one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life’s arrears
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute’s at end,
And the elements’ rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
Monte M. Korn is an attorney practicing law in West Bloomfield, has been a member of the State Bar of Michigan since 1942, and is a member of the Probate and Elder Law Sections of the State Bar.
Monte Korn is the talk show host of “Open Line with Monte Korn” on radio station WNZK am690 every morning at 11 a.m. He can be reached at (248) 933-4334.
The material in the above article is the research of Monte M. Korn. The Detroit, Oakland County, and Macomb County Legal Newspapers have no responsibility therein.
