Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
by richibi
from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“
Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
And wilt thou have me fashion into speech
The love I bear thee, finding words enough,
And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough,
Between our faces, to cast light on each? –
I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach
My hand to hold my spirits so far off
From myself – me – that I should bring thee proof
In words, of love hid in me out of reach.
Nay, let the silence of my womanhood
Commend my woman-love to thy belief, –
Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed,
And rend the garment of my life, in brief,
By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude,
Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.
_________________________
there are circumlocutions in Romantic poetry
that are often hard to follow, and the work of
sorting these out just as often will lead to
giving the poem a pass, how pertinent can
a poem be, you ask, as you cursorily lay it
to rest
unless a line or two, a phrase, a cadence, an
arresting truth you find, becomes enough to
probe it further, to read again with a magnifying
glass this time, checking the entrails, the parts
of speech, the punctuation, their interactions,
the chemistry
this alone is good for your head
the word “rend” upended me here, who, I
wondered, rent, the text is clear but “however
wooed” interjects to sow confusion, a comma
after “wooed”, rather than a hyphen, confirms
that she herself is breaking up inside for fear
of speaking out her anguish, a hyphen
would’ve led us to him
still a bit convoluted, but the underlying
sentiment remains incontrovertibly raw
and clear
Elizabeth Barrett Browning is a mess, but
has found a solid anchor in the refuge of
her manifestly masterful, mistressful, if you’d
rather, poems, though I suspect she’ll never
attain belief in her own connubial validity
van Gogh was also so existentially rent
and also Goethe’s Werther, the premier Romantic
hero, who famously foregos his even life for lack
of validating love
Elizabeth Barrett Browning remains to bear it,
live it, for us, iconically
go, I would think, though ever so distraught,
dear and magnificent Elizabeth
Richard
Richibi's Weblog 
I love that you love EBB. Yes, she was a mess. Difficult for some because they have never known and cannot comprehend such deep insecurities. Difficult for some who are embarrassed by strong emotions. She laid it all out there, yes, raw. But she is always worth the effort. She made brave attempts.