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| XLIII from Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning | ||||||||||||||||||||
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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 breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life !--and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Music in a Dark Room by Elizabeth Bartlett | ||||||||||||||||||||
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We listen to Debussy with the lights turned off. The fire is warm and the day's quota of suffering is over, and we think we are happy for the length of a disc, for a space in time where the ear is all, where there are no words, only notes in the fall of the light rain mingling with his recurring bell sounds, his embossed underground catherdral. The old, the sick, the dying, the spina-bifida child, the malingerer and the manic-depressive, at once so wild, so quiet, according to the swing of the disease, go away for this short, short time. This dark room rings and trembles, fades, washed like limpid waves, restores and comforts, renews and revives us, for we need it, and so will they, in us, tomorrow. | |||||||||||||||||||
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