But the one striking feature of the picture is the intellectual and spiritual expression of the face and head; for here, borne up by pillars of curls on either side, is just such an arch as she saw in ‘The Vision of Poets’:
“A forehead royal with the truth.”
A photograph, taken in Rome only a month before she died, wears a not greatly changed expression, except in an added pallor to cheeks always pale; foretokening the near coming of the shadow of death.
Theodore Tilton: Memorial Preface to ‘Last Poems of Mrs. Browning.’
“The beauty of expression.”
Hers was not the beauty of feature; it was the loftier beauty of expression. Her slight figure seemed hardly large enough to contain the great heart that beat so fervently within, and the soul that expanded more and more as one year gave place to another. It was difficult to believe that such a fairy hand could pen thoughts of such ponderous weight, or that such a still, small voice could utter them with equal force. But it was Mrs. Browning’s face upon which one loved to gaze—that face and head which almost lost themselves in the thick curls of her dark brown hair. That jealous hair could not hide the broad, fair forehead.... Her large brown eyes were beautiful, and were in truth the windows of her soul.
—— ——: ‘Elizabeth Barrett Browning.’ Atlantic Monthly.
Her characteristic modesty.