July Dahlias.....and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 JULY by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach......

 The little cares that fretted me,

 I lost them yesterday, among the fields above the sea...

 Among the winds at play;

 Among the lowing of the herds,

 The rustling of the trees,

 Among the singing of the birds,

 The humming of the bees.

 The foolish fears of what may happen.....I cast them all away,

 Among the clover-scented grass,

 Among the new-mown hay;

 Among the husking of the corn where drowsy poppies nod,

 Where ill thoughts die and good are born,  Out in the fields with God.

 Born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Romantic Movement. Her family, who were part Creole, had lived in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labour, something which saddened Elizabeth. Her father was  a nasty man, and ruled with an iron fist. As a teen, Elizabeth taught herself Hebrew so that she could read the Old Testament. She later took up Greek. She was incredibly intelligent, but suffered from various ailments, becoming reliant on morphine  for pain relief, her entire life. She became immersed in her Christian faith, while continuing to live  in seclusion under the roof of her nasty, nasty father.

 In 1826, Elizabeth published her collection An Essay on Mind and Other Poems.Elizabeth did NOT like slavery. She wrote The Seraphim and Other Poems (1838), expressing Christian sentiments, in the  Greek tragedy. in 1844 she wrote a collection called Poems.   Robert Browning read them, and then Elizabeth and Robert, who was six years younger , began writing letters to each other.  574, to be exact.  In 1846, the couple eloped and ran away to  Florence, Italy, where Elizabeth got  better. She had a baby boy, Robert Wideman Browning. Her nasty old father never spoke to her again. Experts have compared her poetical  imagery to Shakespeare and  Petrarch. She died in Florence on June 29, 1861.

(Photographs 2017 ) Poem "July  by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from "1000 Beautiful Things" (1948) (Chicago)