“She was slight and fragile in appearance, with a pale, wasted face, shaded by masses of soft chestnut curls which fell on her cheeks, and serious eyes of bluish-gray. Her frame seemed to be altogether disproportionate to her soul.”—Bayard Taylor, “At Home and Abroad.”
Mrs. Browning’s poetry, though highly praised by critics and literary men, has not yet attained that popularity which engenders many parodies, being, as Charlotte Brontë wrote, somewhat wordy, intricate and obscure.
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.
Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers—
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows,
The young birds are chirping in the nest,
The young fawns are playing with the shadows,