Elizabeth Barrett Browning - My Kate lyrics

She was not as pretty as women I know
And yet all your best made
Of sunshine and snow
Drop to shade, melt to nought
In the long-trodden ways
While she’s still remembered on
Warm and cold days my Kate

Her air had a meaning, her movements a grace
You turned from the fairest to
Gaze on her face: And when you had once seen
Her forehead and mouth
You saw as distinctly her soul and her truth
My Kate

Such a blue inner light
From her eyelids outbroke
You looked at her silence
And fancied she spoke:
When she did, so peculiar yet
Soft was the tone
Though the loudest spoke also
You heard her alone my Kate

I doubt if she said to
You much that could act
As a thought or suggestion:
She did not attract
In the sense of the brilliant
Or wise: I infer
’T was her thinking of others
Made you think of her my Kate

She never found fault with you, never implied
Your wrong by her right and
Yet men at her side
Grew nobler, girls purer
As through the whole town
The children were gladder that
Pulled at her gown my Kate

None knelt at her feet
Confessed lovers in thrall
They knelt more to God than they used
That was all:
If you praised her as charming
Some asked what you meant
But the charm of her presence
Was felt when she went my Kate

The weak and the gentle, the ribald and rude
She took as she found them
And did them all good
It always was so with her see what you have!
She has made the grass greener
Even here with her grave my Kate

My dear one! when thou wast
Alive with the rest
I held thee the sweetest and
Loved thee the best: And now thou art dead
Shall I not take thy part
As thy smiles used to do for thyself
My sweet Heart my Kate?