Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning begin corresponding when she receives a note—“I love you”—from the then little known poet whose work she had praised in her poem “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship.”
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning marry secretly in 1846.
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low:
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
