A Man's Requirements (excerpts) - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

[highlyeccentric]

Looking at the flags I've stuck in Victorian Women Poets: A New Annotated Anthology (ed. Blain), I seem to gravitate to humorous/narky poems about the failliability of love and male lovers.

A Man's Requirements
(I, II, IX-XI)

I

Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.

II

Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
With its silence tender.

[...]

IX

Love me pure, as muses do,
Up the woodlands shady:
Love me gaily, fast and true,
As a winsome lady.

X

Through all hopes that keep us brave,
Farther off or nigher,
Love me for the house and grave,
And for something higher.

XI

Thus, if thou wilt prove me, Dear,
Woman's love no fable,
I will love thee -- half a year --
As a man is able.