Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. IV. The Nineteenth Century: Wordsworth to Rossetti

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

Irreparableness

I HAVE been in the meadows all the day,

And gathered there the nosegay that you see,

Singing within myself as bird or bee

When such do field-work on a morn of May.

But, now I look upon my flowers, decay

Has met them in my hands more fatally

Because more warmly clasped,—and sobs are free

To come instead of songs. What you say,

Sweet counsellors, dear friends? that I should go

Back straightway to the fields and gather more?

Another, sooth, may do it, but not I!

My heart is very tired, my strength is low,

My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,

Held dead within them till myself shall die.