Vl. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

by richibi

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Vl. Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand…

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forebore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

are you ready for Miss Thing, you have left an indelible
impression upon my soul, she says, inscribed in my very
anatomy, which even the Great Discerner will descry at
the very Day of Reckoning

though today’s girls would take offence at such overt
subservience, I think Elizabeth‘s abnegation speaks
to the ineradicable longing for surrender, physical,
emotional, spiritual, latent ever in all of us, men as
well as women


Richard