i guess i have been feeling the need to aggravate myself emotionally lately, because i borrowed a copy of The Brownings: Letters and Selected Poetry from the library and have been unable to put it down. i've always had a fondness for victorian era literature, and love stories..put them together & it's even more fantastic...and add to the fact that it truly happened..siiighhh. i love both of their poems...but their letters are even more wonderful. 

Apparitions
by: Robert Browning

Such a starved bank of moss
  Till, that May-morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
  Violets were born!
Sky--what a scowl of cloud
  Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
  Splendid, a star!
World--how it walled about
  Life with disgrace,                                                        
Till God's own smile came out:
  That was thy face!

The Lady's Yes 
by: Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett

" Yes!" I answered you last night;
" No!" this morning, Sir, I say!
Colours, seen by candle-light,
Will not look the same by day.

When the tabors played their best,
Lamps above, and laughs below--
Love me sounded like a jest,
Fit for Yes or fit for No!

Call me false, or call me free--
Vow, whatever light may shine,
No man on your face shall see
Any grief for change on mine.

Yet the sin is on us both--
Time to dance is not to woo--
Wooer light makes fickle troth--
Scorn of me recoils on you!

Learn to win a lady's faith
Nobly, as the thing is high;
Bravely, as for life and death--
With a loyal gravity.

Lead her from the festive boards,
Point her to the starry skies,
Guard her, by your truthful words,
Pure from courtship's flatteries.

By your truth she shall be true--
Ever true, as wives of yore--
And her Yes, once said to you,
Shall be Yes for evermore.

This is what makes me smile:

beginnings.