For two years they knew each other with mutual and growing dislike. He was
the wild youth, pushing the envelope, while she was Miss prim and proper.
Both were gifted, talented, in plays and choirs, but no inclination to think
of one another.
Friday the 13th of September 1968. Propelled together as upper classmen in a
new school, they fought a battle of wits with both well-armed and armored.
Parry and thrust, thrust and parry, and to end the refrain, thrust home. A
growing tension of minds, bodies, souls, blazing from embers into leaping
tongues of fire that could not be quenched.
They both sought parts in the fall play that season and the casting call
required reading a dialog or monolog. Given parts at random, they were
called together to read as Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.
Elizabeth Barrett: What’s another disaster to one who has known little but
disaster all her life? But you’re a fighter. You were born for victory and
triumph. Oh, and if disaster ever came to you through me…
Robert Browning: Yes, a fighter. But I’m sick of fighting alone. I need a
comrade in arms to fight beside me.
Elizabeth Barrett: But not one already wounded in battle.
Robert Browning: Wounded but undaunted, unbeaten, unbroken. What finer
comrade could a man ask for?
Elizabeth Barrett: Robert, have you ever thought that my strength may break
down on the journey?
Robert Browning: It had occurred to me, yes.
Elizabeth Barrett: Supposing I were to die on your hands?
Robert Browning: Are you afraid?
Elizabeth Barrett: Afraid. You should know that I would rather die with you
beside me than live a hundred lives without you. But how would you feel if I
were to die? And what would the world say of you?
Robert Browning: I should be branded as a little better than a murderer.
What I should feel… I leave you to imagine.
Elizabeth Barrett: And yet you ask me to come with you?
Robert Browning: Yes. I am prepared to risk your life, much more my own, to
get you out of that dreadful house and into the sun and to have you for my
wife.
Elizabeth Barrett: You love me like that?
Robert Browning: I love you like that.
Elizabeth Barrett: Papa, please. I’m not a bad girl, I swear I’m not, only I
love him, I love him. He’s a good man, it can’t be wrong to love him. I want
love, I can’t live without love. Oh Papa, remember how you loved Mama and
how she loved you!
Robert Browning: I’m a very modest man.
[pause]
Robert Browning: I am, really.
Friday the 13th of December 1968. He held a ring and held her hand. Having
met more then his match in every phase of life, he was conquered by love.
She answered his request for marriage with Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
sonnet . . .
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 every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
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 grief’s, 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.
June 19, 1970 – 40 years ago today, in a small Baptist church in Wyoming,
two young starry-eyed graduates stepped out to share with each other and all
who had gathered their vows of eternal love to each other.
And so we commit again to Browning’s immortal words:
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which
the first was made. Our times are in His hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned
– youth shows but half. Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!'”
~~
Dr Bob Griffin
[email protected] www.grif.net
“Jesus Knows Me, This I Love!”