I Lived With Visions For My Company

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Title:     I Lived With Visions For My Company
Author: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [More Titles by Browning]

Sonnet XXVI.

I lived with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, nor thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to me.
But soon their trailing purple was not free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst come--to be,
Beloved, what they seemed. Their shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendours (better, yet the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee overcame
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

[The end]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem: I Lived With Visions For My Company

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