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Poem by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning


Grief


I TELL you, hopeless grief is passionless;
That only men incredulous of despair,
Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air
Beat upward to God's throne in loud access
Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness,
In souls as countries, lieth silent-bare
Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare
Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express
Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death--
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet:
If it could weep, it could arise and go. 

1815

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning


Elizabeth Barrett-Browning's other poems:
  1. The Holy Night
  2. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 30. I see thine image through my tears to-night
  3. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 40. Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
  4. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 23. Is it indeed so? If I lay here dead
  5. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 38. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed


Poems of the other poets with the same name:

  • George Herbert Grief ("O who will give me tears? Come, all ye springs")
  • Ella Wilcox Grief ("As the funeral train with its honoured dead")

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