Sonnet 08 - What Can I Give Thee Back, O Liberal
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
VIII What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the-wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse? am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all? Not so; not cold,—but very poor instead. Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run The colors from my life, and left so dead And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done To give the same as pillow to thy head. Go farther! let it serve to trample on.
Next 10 Poems
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 09 - Can It Be Right To Give What I Can Give?
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 10 - Yet, Love, Mere Love, Is Beautiful Indeed
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 11 - And Therefore If To Love Can Be Desert
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 12 - Indeed This Very Love Which Is My Boast
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 13 - And Wilt Thou Have Me Fashion Into Speech
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 14 - If Thou Must Love Me, Let It Be For Nought
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 15 - Accuse Me Not, Beseech Thee, That I Wear
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 16 - And Yet, Because Thou Overcomest So
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 17 - My Poet, Thou Canst Touch On All The Notes
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 18 - I Never Gave A Lock Of Hair Away
Previous 10 Poems
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 07 - The Face Of All The World Is Changed, I Think
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 06 - Go From Me. Yet I Feel That I Shall Stand
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 05 - I Lift My Heavy Heart Up Solemnly
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 04 - Thou Hast Thy Calling To Some Palace-floor
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 03 - Unlike Are We, Unlike, O Princely Heart!
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 02 - But Only Three In All God's Universe
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnet 01 - I Thought Once How Theocritus Had Sung
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Seraph And Poet, The
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Runaway Slave At Pilgrim's Point, The
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Rosalind's Scroll