Valentine's Day Approaches...

Brett just asked me for a love poem, and this is my favorite one ever. (Cute little story to go with it, if you don't know: Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it in a tribute to her love for her husband, Robert Browning, because she was revived from illness when she met him.)



Life And Love

Fast this Life of mine was dying,
Blind already and calm as death,
Snowflakes on her bosom lying
Scarcely heaving with her breath.

Love came by, and having known her
In a dream of fabled lands,
Gently stooped, and laid upon her
Mystic chrism of holy hands;

Drew his smile across her folded
Eyelids, as the swallow dips;
Breathed as finely as the cold did
Through the locking of her lips.

So, when life looked upward, being
Warmed and breathed on from above,
What sight could she have for seeing,
Evermore… but only LOVE?

—Elizabeth Browning