A literary romance!

Escape me? Never Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again, So the chase takes up one's life, that's all. While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one,
straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me Ever Removed!

As I sift through my fairly large collection of books in preparation of my shifting home in the not too distant future, I chanced upon a book of collected poems that had been suggested to us in high school. Leafing through the book I stopped at the above poem, by Robert Browning. Browning was an enigma. A struggling writer, he was fortunate to have had a supportive family who stayed with him till he tasted success.Browning turned out to be hugely successful, but strangely, what endures today is not Browning's works, but his almost surreal romance with Elizabeth Barret, which started in 1844.
Barret an invalid and recluse, a prisoner in her home, was under the thumb of a selfish father and a suffocating family who encouraged her being a recluse. That is till, Browning appeared in her life & kindled a romance that has fascinated the literary world over generations. Their romance is recorded in 573 letters that went back and forth between their two homes, till finally Barret and Browning quietly eloped to Italy and thereon lived a wonderful life, till Elizabeth died twelve years later.They met 91 times at Elizabeth's house, The only time that they met outside was when they were married, in 1846. What mazes me, is the romance. When it started, Browning was 32 and Barret 38. No spring chickens.Browning was in love even before he met Barret. In Barret's poetry he was quite immersed and had fallen in love with the spirit of the writings.The romance was barely physical and mostly spiritual. One poet to another.Barret the shy, invalid responded like a caged bird set free and much of the correspondence, though coached in Victorian English is full of ardour.

My English teacher of the day was amazingly good at bringing out the nuances of poetry and made us see the softer side of life.I think as we grow, our hard skills take precedence and when we embark on a journey of a career, family and money we lose that tenuous link that keeps us anchored to humanity. In school reading poetry was as important as cracking the next geometry theorem and for that I must thank the people who taught me, because they taught us not just math & literature but a good deal of life as well.

Barret wrote in her Sonnets from the Portugese:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
What wonderful stuff!