The Poetry of Love. Speaking from the Heart

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Shakespeare

Love whether fleeting or of the ages, expressed with a look, a touch, or a thought is wanted by us all.

Across genders and generations love is both the glue and the accelerant of our lives.

Yet once gained we sometimes let it go without recognition of its value or fail to nourish it spiritually. Love needs feeding, needs tending. Love needs love.

In today’s easy, ‘always on’ society we wail, whine and weep and forget that accomplishment will involve work, will involve sacrifice but it brings rewards. Rewards larger than our rational understanding but instinctively safe within our souls. And that can make us better people. To ourselves and each other.

First love can be electric and consuming. But love matures, passions turn to bonds, amour to armour, to soulmates. A parents’ love is infinite and merciful but always streaked with protection. The march of time makes love dependable despite squabbles and bumps of heartache. But love can be unrequited, love can break, can fail. Love comes in all shapes and sizes, and in many combinations, for an instant and forever.

When we speak with our hearts we speak with a rarer truth that the brain can make light of, can reduce to the ephemeral, but love is our greatest ally, our surest need that we are of value to each other and our common humanity.

Sometimes love requires many things of us. To bear loss, to retreat, to compromise, to surrender but in every way, it enriches us. Sometimes not even for now but some future gain.

Our classic poets did not surrender to the logic of the group or seek advice from others quick to blame but slow to embrace. Their legacy remains because it is true, because in that look, that touch, that thought, that display of words the heart remembers us and treasures us.

Here are words and verse of love. For your ears, your loved one’s ears and hearts everywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Nov 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781835470343

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was an English poet. The daughter of a wealthy family—her father made his fortune as a slave owner in Jamaica, while her mother’s family owned and operated sugar plantations, mills, and ships—Browning eventually became an abolitionist and advocate for child labor laws. Her marriage to the prominent Victorian poet Robert Browning caused the final break between Browning and her family, after which she moved to Italy and lived there with Robert for the rest of her life. She began writing poems at a young age, finding success with the 1844 publication of Poems. Browning went on to be recognized as one of the foremost poets of early Victorian England, influencing such writers as Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is most famous for her Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 love poems published in 1850, and Aurora Leigh, an 1856 epic poem described by leading Victorian critic John Ruskin as the greatest long poem written in the nineteenth century. Browning suffered from numerous illnesses throughout her life, eventually succumbing in Florence at the age of 55.

Book preview

The Poetry of Love. Speaking from the Heart

An Introduction

Love whether fleeting or of the ages, expressed with a look, a touch, or a thought is wanted by us all.

Across genders and generations love is both the glue and the accelerant of our lives.

Yet once gained we sometimes let it go without recognition of its value or fail to nourish it spiritually. Love needs feeding, needs tending. Love needs love.

In today’s easy, ‘always on’ society we wail, whine and weep and forget that accomplishment will involve work, will involve sacrifice but it brings rewards. Rewards larger than our rational understanding but instinctively safe within our souls.  And that can make us better people. To ourselves and each other.

First love can be electric and consuming. But love matures, passions turn to bonds, amour to armour, to soulmates. A parents’ love is infinite and merciful but always streaked with protection.  The march of time makes love dependable despite squabbles and bumps of heartache.  But love can be unrequited, love can break, can fail.  Love comes in all shapes and sizes, and in many combinations, for an instant and forever.

When we speak with our hearts we speak with a rarer truth that the brain can make light of, can reduce to the ephemeral, but love is our greatest ally, our surest need