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Category: Robert Browning

July 19, 2013

XLlV. Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XLlV. Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers

Belovèd, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground. Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy! – take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________________

let me, much as Elizabeth is doing here,
submit these comments which I’ve been
sending you, all 44 of them specifically
on these sonnets, their very entirety,
not to mention other opinions I’ve
delivered on several other topics, they
are what I can return of what the world
has given me, the world has “brought
me many flowers”

“these thoughts which here unfolded
[for me] too,” while all of this was
happening, “And which on warm and
cold days I withdrew / From my heart’s
ground.”, through “bitter [even] weeds
and rue” sometimes indeed also,
despite, unreasonably perhaps, the
abundance of flowers, for I succumb
easily also, as poets often do, to
crushing despair – who’d o’ thunk it –
and can be categorically unforgiving
at times of an ungorgiving God

see Philip Larkin for instance on this one
before seeing even Nietzsche, and I could
name, of course, several others

“yet here’s eglantine, / Here’s ivy!”, I’ve
also found, and have concluded that
their example is the one to follow

be splendid, it is the only honourable
answer, I’ve devised, which God could
not easily dishonour

these verses have been as my flowers,
“take them, ….. / …. , and keep them
where they shall not pine. / Instruct
thine eyes to keep their colours true,
/ And tell thy soul, their roots are left
in mine.”

yours ever truly

Richard

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July 16, 2013

XLlll. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XLlll. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

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 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 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

__________________________

there are two lines of verse in English
poetry which are early trumpeted by even
those who would have no truck in general
with poems, one about life, one about love,
paraded by already youths with all the
passion of their unbridled years, if not
oratorically advocating, at least sardonically
making fun of perhaps too mannered, even
irrelevant, in their opinion, I would think,
matter, namely Shakespeare‘s “To be, or
not to be“ and Elizabeth Barrett Browning‘s
“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways“

nothing much of the rest of these two
poems generally is known, though their
introductions be, even at the level of the
succeeeding ages, panoramic, neither,
either, incidentally, has ever, in its
substance, been equalled

“To be, or not to be“ upon first exploring
it surprises for being, not, as supposed,
a paean to glory, for its declamatory, I
suspect, and engaging, cadences, but a
treatise on the very value of life, Hamlet,
despairing of the state of Denmark, where,
“something”, if you’ll remember, “is rotten”,
where his mother and murderous stepfather
have evilly, he imagines, conspired to steal
his real father’s throne, who hovers now
as a disturbing, and exhortative, presence,
keeping the action, or inaction in this case,
going, can never reach an answer, come to
a decision, “To be, or not to be“, “that is the
[inexorable] question”

more specifically, “Whether ’tis nobler
in the mind to suffer”, he asks, “The slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to
take arms against a sea of troubles, /
And by opposing end them:”, is life
worth living if the cost is so dire

Hamlet will not do the deed himself,
ultimately, of securing his own demise,
but will actively eventually allow it

one will wonder then, is life worthwhile,
Shakespeare never gives us a direct
answer

Elizabeth, however, talks about love, its,
essentially, apotheosis, an expression,
yet unrivalled of how we would like to
love, be loved

her declamation becomes somewhat
elaborate, even morbid, at the end,
macabre, but the force of the initial
statement has weathered already
several unforgiving ages, fresh and
true and captivating, fundamentally,
as ever

Richard

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July 14, 2013

XLll. “My future will not copy fair my past” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XLll. “My future will not copy fair my past”

“My future will not copy fair my past” –
I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel justified
The word by his appealing look upcast
To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul! Then I, long tried
By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim’s staff
Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.
I seek no copy now of life’s first half:
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future’s epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

“You really make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this
matter to be actually something which I think I would never understand.
It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me.
I am looking forward for your next post, I will try
to get the hang of it!“

because there was no return address
on this comment, and because its
uncorroborated website, a gaming site,
seemed to me suspect, I’ve chosen to
reply within the safer body of my
discussion, rather than within the
thickets and brambles of the more
treacherous Internet

but I profoundly respect the, not at all
uncommon, opinion

therefore this

Elizabeth Barrett Browning is not
immediately accesible to us in the
early 21st Century, this comment is
such an example, unsolicited but
honest, and it is the cry of the
uninitiated through no fault of their
own before time’s obfuscating,
even linguistic, even literary, but
ever ineffable, shroud, I had the
same sense of its, often, preciosity
when I first started reading poetry,
not only even but especially the
greats who’d been recommended,
it took a poet who spoke my
language before I could take
verse seriously

but since then it has become for
me a garden of existential, of
transcendental, delights,
revelations I can’t help but want
to share, not only substantial
stuff, but, I think, sacred

no one has said it better to date
than Pamela Spiro Wagner in
“How to Read a Poem: Beginner’s
Manual“

“Read just one poem a day.
Someday a book of poems may open in your hands
like a daffodil offering its cup
to the sun“

even a daffodil like Elizabeth
Barrett Browning

Elizabeth is a siren here, I asked of heaven,
she says, “My future will not copy fair my
past”, and along comes, goodness, a
miracle in the form of, more or less, an
angel – “not unallied / To angels in thy
soul”, she describes him in her particular
Victorian dialect, not always immediately
penetrable

she was so happy then, she grew ”green
leaves”, she asserts, evidently exaggerating,
“with”, even, “morning dews impearled”,
she further enthusiastically confides, but
of which we won’t out of discretion, of
course, inquire

let’s just say she will hitch her wagon
therefore to his, “[n]ew angel mine”, star,
for the foreseeable, however “unhoped
for”, future

which man could resist being called “not
unallied / To angels“, Elizabeth, seductress,
enchantress, I call my man Apollo, my
golden god of light

Richard

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July 7, 2013

XLl. I thank all who have loved me in their hearts – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XLl. I thank all who have loved me in their hearts

I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward, each one to the mart’s
Or temple’s occupation, beyond call.
But thou, who, in my voice’s sink and fall,
When the sob took it, thy divinest Art’s
Own instrument didst drop down at thy foot
To hearken what I said between my tears, –
Instruct me how to thank thee! Oh, to shoot
My soul’s full meaning into future years,
That they should lend it utterance, and salute
Love that endures, from Life that disappears!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

addressing everything that came before
Elizabeth seems to be addressing also
everything that comes after, which is to
say eternity, infinity, her legacy

her hope is that she will be able to express
the thanks she owes to someone, among all
others who loved her indeed but could only
move on after listening to her, who didn’t

inadvertently she therein defines true love,
he, or indeed she, who would “thy divinest
Art’s / Own instrument” – in this instance
Robert‘s poetry – “didst drop down at thy
foot / To hearken what I said between my
tears” – who would suspend his work, and
pay attention to her sorrow, to even her
inanities, I here interpolate advisedly, her
achievements, her very joys

for fleeting love loves mostly itself in passing,
a love which easily overlooks, and dissipates

I believe Elizabeth in this poem has thrust
herself into significant poetic history, finally,
combining her account of her personal love
with a voice which for the first time in the
sonnets addresses itself to, however
circuitously, some would say surreptitiously,
even circumspectly – for she’s speaking still
to him – to history, to “future years, / That they
should lend it utterance“, a literary marriage,
she’s effected by this extrapolation, this
synecdoche – supplanting the part for the
whole – of the personal and the, at the very
least anthropologically, profound

topped off with a toast, “salute”, even to a
coveted, though perhaps only apocryphal,
I interject, ideal, “Love that endures, from
Life that disappears”

how, and by very definition, Romantic, is
that

Richard

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May 30, 2013

XXXlX. Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXlX. Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace

Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace
To look through and behind this mask of me
(Against which years have beat thus blanchingly
With their rains), and behold my soul’s true face,
The dim and weary witness of life’s race, –
Because thou hast the faith and love to see,
Through that same soul’s distracting lethargy,
The patient angel waiting for a place
In the new Heavens, – because nor sin nor woe,
Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighbourhood,
Nor all which others viewing, turn to go,
Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed, –
Nothing repels thee, . . . dearest, teach me so
To pour out gratitude, as thou dost good!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________________

after XXXVlll indeed iconic poems, wherein
Elizabeth speaks nearly exclusively about
herself, intimately and, as history would
show, epochally, breaking new, fertile,
Romantic in this instance, ground, she
turns her attention here to someone else,
to Robert, her paragon

Bette Midler would later say, now that’s
enough about me, let’s talk about you,
what do you think about me

having shed some of her insecurity,
Elizabeth seems equally more solid, less
fragmented, in her inordinate, indeed
disarming, ardour

you’ll note a return to rhyme, metre, cadence,
commas are in the right place, the reiteration
of certain words, like markers, beat rhythm
as well as emphasis, the ground of the
verses seems sounder, sound, all elements
which earlier would have determined the
very parameters of poetry, as though she
could now return to balance, order, lyricism,
even convention, when turned away from
strictly herself, a lesson I’m sure we could
all learn

Schubert, incidentally, could ‘ve easily set
this to music, as indeed someone else did
here only over a year ago, David MacIntyre,
and called it “Love in Public“, an inspiration
which set me off on this very journey

to date this is my very favourite of Elizabeth‘s
poems

Richard

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May 17, 2013

XXXVlll. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXVlll. First time he kissed me, he but only kissed

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its “Oh, list,”
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede.
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, “My love, my own.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________________

had the sonnet allowed for more lines,
instead of its strict fourteen, this poem
could not ‘ve not become indecent,
“purple”, she says, indeed

nor, for that matter, more clear, Elizabeth
has succumbed to his one, two, three
kisses, enough to now call him “[m]y love,
my own”

meed is a reward, and archaic

chrism is holy anointing oil, nearly also
now, but sacramentally, lost

so intimate a declaration as this would’ve
been unprecedented in 1845-46, when
these poems were written, though we’re
used to much more flagrant stuff nowadays

that this had been written by a woman
must’ve been nearly scandalous, though
such was allowing the Romantic Age, and
this “most flagrant” expression would
become eventually its very symbol, the
exploration of the human heart, the highly
intimate revelations of an individual soul

Elizabeth Barrett Browning holds the top
spot here, nobody does it better

in intrinsically less overtly graphic music,
Chopin

Richard Strauss does a similar thing in his
opera “Salome” several years later, several,
indeed, decades later, 1905, but in reverse,
Salome wants to first of all touch John the
Baptist’s skin, he won’t allow it, undaunted
she asks to touch his black hair, nor will
he allow that, she insists further on a kiss,
which doesn’t either come, the scene is
lurid and shocking

“nothing in the world is as red as your
mouth”, she begs, “let me kiss it, your
mouth”

my dear, I cautioned

later she will dance the “Dance of the Seven
Veils“, lately performed even, after the veils
are, one by one, off, naked

for which she gets John the Baptist’s head,
and finally gets her kiss

honest

the version I saw was unforgettable,
though it had taken a free ticket to
get me there

Richard

psst: you’ll note, incidentally, that this poem
is not an avowal, but a confidence,
spoken to us, not to him, a not
insignificant factor

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May 6, 2013

XXXVll. Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXVll. Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make

Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make,
Of all that strong divineness which I know
For thine and thee, an image only so
Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.
It is that distant years which did not take
Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,
Have forced my swimming brain to undergo
Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake
The purity of likeness and distort
Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit:
As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to commemorate,
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

though Elizabeth Barrett Browning is ever
abstruse, dare I say, even Baroque – the
epoch of distorted perspectives and
dimensions which preceded the Classical
Era – in her not only grammatical but also
metaphorical constructions, to the point of,
as in the last, her XXXVlth sonnet, being
incomprehensible, too athwart for my taste,
or even my tolerance, here she returns to
form to shine again in her own Romantic
Age, a more literate time, as opposed to
our more visual one, where straight talk
would not ‘ve passed muster as worthy
of any art, that would happen only later
as a reaction to too elaborate artifice,
which you might already even decry,
for instance, in these sonnets

but to make distinctive the form – the sonnet
goes back to at least Shakespeare, who is
even an obvious inspiration for Elizabeth –
she would’ve had to embroider her own
version of it, which she could only have
done with fresh artifice upon the ancient
structure, like decorative elaborations on
the traditional tablecloth

if they work it’s because the artifice meets
the substance equally, enough to give
meaning to the poem, verve to the
reinvigorated tabletop

but often, dear Elizabeth, for me, and I would
think for many others in our Twitter age, for
the most part your poems do only just, albeit
enough to make you nevertheless iconic

for Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Chopin
represent for us now more than any of the
other Romantics their distinctive Age, and
with great, let there be no doubt, and easily
demonstrated, authority

“Pardon, oh, pardon“ is not a breeze but it
expands admirably, and distinctively, on her
other masterpieces, or should I say here,
mistresspieces

forgive my soul, she asks, for mistaking your
“strong divineness” for something as fleeting
as “sand”, something “fit to shift and break”

his “sovranty” – sovereignty, which finds its
etymological roots in the French word
“souveraineté”, should you be wondering –
had not been a part of her past, her “distant
years” and therefore led to her confusion,
her “swimming brain”, imagining he might
be “a worthless counterfeit” – haven’t we all
been there – instead of the “worthiest love”

she compares herself to a “shipwrecked
Pagan”, who, saved, “safe in port”, gives
thanks, pays homage, to “a sea-god”, “a
sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort”, rather
than, of course, her One and True
Christian God, an interesting instance
of religious iconographical inflexibility,
as though her Christian God had more
authenticity than the sea deity

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, it should be
noted, remained ever to her Divinity devout
despite the intermittent fluctuations of her
less religiously committed husband

who nevertheless remained ever to her
true, and ever, both romantically and
Romantically, by her, stalwart

Richard

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April 30, 2013

XXXVl. When we met first and loved, I did not build – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXVl. When we met first and loved, I did not build

When we met first and loved, I did not build
Upon the event with marble. Could it mean
To last, a love set pendulous between
Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled,
Distrusting every light that seemed to gild
The onward path, and feared to overlean
A finger even. And, though I have grown serene
And strong since then, I think that God has willed
A still renewable fear . . .O love, O troth
Lest these enclaspèd hands should never hold,
This mutual kiss drop down between us both
As an unowned thing, once the lips being cold.
And Love, be false! if he, to keep one oath,
Must lose one joy, by his life’s star foretold

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

some poems cross the line of scrutability,
the line of even credibility sometimes,
being too cute for their own artful ever
nevertheless intentions, too abstruse,
clever, for their own too weighted words,
having let artifice overwhelm whatever
substance

the beginning here is straightforward,
Elizabeth hasn’t cast her dreams in
“marble”, she hasn’t engraved her
illusions in stone, she dutifully allows
for disappointment in the promise of
fulfilment that lies between what has
lain before for her and what lies ahead
be this promise not fulfilled, or
eventually, in any case, forthwith
thwarted, as inexorably it must, for
she is, they are, we all are, inescapably
mortal, we come to the end, ineluctably,
of all our projected dreams

but the danger of breaking, however
inadvertently, so magical a spell,
prevents her from moving even a
finger, as though a breath, a bristle,
a brush, could threaten its tenuous,
as she would have it, enchantment

and haven’t we all been there, I
remember the death of a possible love
in the momentary merely, and utterly
arbitrary, obstruction of our charged
line of sight, a sure sign of discordance,
a clear and irrevocable omen

but should their own conjunction not
hold, “This mutual kiss drop down
between us both”, she enjoins, allow
it to take hold as an independent, an
“unowned”, thing, a tribute ever to the
ineradicability of the moment, she urges,
even beyond their “lips being cold”, which
is to say, each beyond their, indomitably
separated, extraterrestrial existences

but why “drop down” instead of “raise”,
“[t]his mutual kiss …. between us”, one
incidentally wonders, shouldn’t a kiss
move up

“Love”, she then continues, “be false”,
out of, it seems, nowhere, do not hold
your promise of forever, she says, should
her suitor’s “oath” in any way betray his
happiness

hn, I asked, where did that come from

what are you talking about here, Elizabeth,
I pondered, which “oath” is to be kept, and
what “joy” is being threatened, you’ll have
to be more specific, dear

and how, furthermore, does this statement
follow from your otherwise reasonably
consecutive text

your love, I’m afraid, is a literary muddle in
this sorry construction, you’re generally,
though always metaphorically intricate,
more penetrable than this, you’ve let your
literary impulse trump your logic on this
one, Elizabeth, we’re not getting it

a poem must be, by definition, coherent, I
think, otherwise it’s nothing but hogwash,
doing damage to the very idea of poetry,
an affront, in the instance, indeed a
blasphemy

for poetry, to my mind, is sacred

then again maybe I’m being too ardent,
too harsh, too inflexible

and, for that matter, what, indeed, is
poetry

you define it

you be, for you are, the judge

Richard

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April 5, 2013

XXXV. If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XXXV. If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange
And be all to me? Shall I never miss
Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss
That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,
When I look up, to drop on a new range
Of walls and floors, another home than this?
Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is
Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?
That’s hardest. If to conquer love, has tried,
To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove;
For grief indeed is love and grief beside.
Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.
Yet love me – wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,
And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

though I’d assumed throughout that Elizabeth
was already married to Robert Browning while
she was writing these poems, the first line of
this sonnet got me wondering, “If I leave all
for thee”, what “all” could she be leaving if
she were already ensconced in his
metaphorical arms, even bedchamber

it turns out the poems, written from 1845
to 1846, were a prelude to their conjugal
knot, in 1846

well gee, so bold, even unbuttoned, I’ve
often thought, and yet evidently so
persuasive, or even conversely, maybe,
for him, irresistible, ultimately, who’d o’
thunk it

“If I leave all for thee”, “wilt thou”, she asks
“be all to me”, he must’ve asked her here,
just then, to be his bride

will I miss the place I’m leaving, will you
leave me more barren than in the “tender”
world I’m used to, than in the one I at least
know now, indeed an ever most adequate
haven

do not trip on the word “tried” in the first line
of the first triplet, which is to say, line nine,
which here means “has been a challenge”,
and not “has attempted”, Elizabeth is, of
course, a poet, poets do things like that,
supposing it to be good for your vocabulary

to conquer grief, she says, is even more trying
than conquering love, for grief is both together

tell me about it

her sadness, she feels, might have disqualified
her from ever being loved, would he chance it,
“wilt thou”, she questions him

about “the wet wings of [her] dove”, I’ll let you
figure it out

Richard

psst: he said yes

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April 3, 2013

XXXlV. With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese”

XXXlV. With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee

With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee
As those, when thou shalt call me by my name –
Lo, the vain promise! is the same, the same,
Perplexed and ruffled by life’s strategy?
When called before, I told how hastily
I dropped my flowers or brake off from a game,
To run and answer with the smile that came
At play last moment, and went on with me
Through my obedience. When I answer now,
I drop a grave thought, break from solitude;
Yet still my heart goes to thee – ponder how –
Not as to a single good, but all my good –
Lay thy hand on it, best one, and allow
That no child’s foot could run fast as this blood.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________

despite the fact that this poem is evidently
a continuation of the last one, her XXXlllrd,
“Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear“,
it is interesting to note that this XXXlVth
can stand entirely on its own, a separate
and independently cohesive entity, having
in this present iteration revisited all the
points that make the previously rendered
account wholly here a recapitulation, in all
even its intricate detail, superimposed upon
the other, or, more accurately here, after the
other, like skilled and artful embroidery, or
like Russian, maybe, nesting dolls

again it’s wise to watch the commas, and
read the lines as you would prose, if you’ll
pardon my, perhaps impertinent,
suggestion

but even then you’ll come up short, in the
second line at “those”, whose referents
are only inferred, though indeed still only
dimly, by the end of the poem

“those” are of course those she ran to, her
elders, and by extension their plural, note,
“eyes”, a wonderful, and shimmering, dare
I say, stitch, a reverberant metonymy, where
the “eyes” are not only those of one “some
face”, but apparently various also others, a
veritable prism ultimately in which she had
been severally reflected

and we’re just at line two, the second verse,
Elizabeth is manifestly a poet

in the third verse, “the same, the same”
juxtaposes twin statements, the point is
that these identities are now timeworn,
“[p]erplexed and ruffled by life’s strategy”,
by life’s disaffections and dislocations,
and become entirely opposite

but this remains

she says that her step is even more nimble,
now, fleeter, “no child’s step could run as
fast as this blood”, “this blood” being her
ardent, of course, devotion, she asks that
he be her purpose, “[n]ot as to a single
good, but all my good”

but isn’t that like saying God, in a world,
the Romantic Age, become then, if you’ll
remember, much more secular, this
position no longer a blasphemy, a heresy,
however unconsciously publically, even
scandalously, subversive

may he “[l]ay [his] hand on it”, she invokes,
his metaphysical hand on her metaphorical
heart, and “allow”, confirm, indeed consecrate,
this fervent declaration, which she has signed
with, assigned her last word to, note, her very
“blood”

Richard

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