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Category: Sonnets from the Portuguese

July 14, 2012

XVlll. I never gave a lock of hair away – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVlll. I never gave a lock of hair away

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified, –
Take it thou, – finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________________

with her one word, “this”, peremptory and indicative,
Elizabeth anchors us to a common present, making
us witness to the scene, a scene of the most tender
intimacies

these effortlessly transcend by their apparent
urgency and truth the usual meter of a sonnet,
leaving in the dust however always only perfect
rhymes, like wooden sentinels left twirling in too
strong a wind

enough of them however to constitute a poem

or what’s a poem

the same kind of thing happens in the history
of music, where notes skip deftly over a bar
without even the semblance of an
acknowledging curtsy, caught up in the more
compelling reality of their vivid and impetuous
imagination, like children who haven’t learned
quite all the rules yet

in Mozart, his piano sonata in D major, K576,
here for instance, the incorrigible child is
ever even present, even ever evident

both poets reflect a search for greater
authenticity, challenging established ideas
of beauty in its unending deliberation with
truth, see Keats on this irreducible dichotomy

Richard

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July 13, 2012

XVll. My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVll. My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes

My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes
God set between His After and Before,
And strike up and strike off the general roar
Of the rushing worlds a melody that floats
In a serene air purely. Antidotes
Of medicated music, answering for
Mankind’s forlornest uses, thou canst pour
From thence into their ears. God’s will devotes
Thine to such ends, and mine to wait on thine.
How, Dearest, wilt thou have me for most use?
A hope, to sing by gladly? or a fine
Sad memory, with thy songs to interfuse?
A shade, in which to sing – of palm or pine?
A grave, on which to rest from singing? Choose.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

it is to be remembered that Robert Browning at the
time was considered a poet of growing authority
though Elizabeth herself had not been of no
consequence, and her star was not to lose its
brilliance in the literary firmament throughout her
lifetime and beyond, but Robert was a man and
benefited therefore from greater consideration
than would’ve then a woman, a not unfamiliar
situation even now

the institutional role of women was pretty well
the one that Elizabeth naturally took on, when
women had no other recourse but to be
dependent, if not graced with comfortable
independent means, which in fact Elizabeth
was

with such an unmistakable gift as hers, however,
I can’t imagine that beyond the genuine love she
manifests for her husband throughout her poems
she would have been unaware of her own
considerable worth, ever granting that love can
be even ever so blind, my own love for instance
riding each morning for me preternaturally and
however improbably the very chariot of a
blinding, mesmerizing, sun

“Choose” though, she at the very last commands,
striking again a telling imperative

note the elision of the rhyme through several
verses in the poem giving the lines a momentum
that lets the poem fly, making the matter
compelling, urgent

compare Mozart soaring above the bar lines
when the piano is comparably unleashed, to
let the music make a similar irrepressible magic

prose is finding its way into poetry here, poetry
conversely into prose

Richard

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July 10, 2012

XVl. And yet, because thou overcomest so – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XVl. And yet, because thou overcomest so

And yet, because thou overcomest so,
Because thou art more noble and like a king,
Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling
Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow
Too close against thine heart henceforth to know
How it shook when alone. Why, conquering
May prove as lordly and complete a thing
In lifting upward, as in crushing low!
And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword
To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,
Even so, Beloved, I at last record,
Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth,
I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

______________________

by the very fact of being king, she says, you elevate
me to the status of being queen, be I ever so humble

therefore I cede, and duly accept, however mightily
encumbered, thy proferred crown

long live, I say, Elizabeth

and, morally as well as aesthetically inspired, I
proclaim, wow

Richard

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July 8, 2012

XV. Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XV. Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear

Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear
Too calm and sad a face in front of thine;
For we two look two ways, and cannot shine
With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest with no doubting care,
As on a bee shut in a crystalline;
Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love’s divine,
And to spread wing and fly in the outer air
Were most impossible failure, if I strove
To fail so. But I look on thee – on thee –
Beholding, besides love, the end of love,
Hearing oblivion beyond memory;
As one who sits and gazes from above,
Over the rivers to the bitter sea.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________

having been flung into the maelstrom of love Elizabeth
Barrett Browning has now conceded that her condition is
a fact, she might as well deal with it

and deal with it she does, in imperatives, “Accuse me not”,
she orders, after the many other stipulations she musters
in the last, her XIVth of these poems, where “… love me
for love’s sake”, she demands after a string of other, albeit
precautionary, edicts

there are parameters to this involvement, she insists, you
must love me for who I am if we are to share destinies too
profound, and too fraught, to squander

in this I suspect she will be a woman of steel

Richard

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July 7, 2012

XIV. If thou must love me, let it be for nought – Elizabeth Barrett Browning‏

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

XIV. If thou must love me, let it be for nought

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
“I love her for her smile – her look – her way
Of speaking gently, – for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day” –
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, – and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, –
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou may’st love on, through love’s eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_____________________

with this poem Elizabeth has written her way, I think,
along with “love’s”, into her own immortality, not only
has she acknowledged her lover’s love, taken a practical
stance about it – straightforward, no circumlocutions –
but touches also upon a truth of love, one of its
inextricable conditions, love is, she affirms, as an
article of very faith, forever

compare Shakespeare on the subject, an interesting
juxtaposition I picked up from another astute observer
on the Internet

Sonnet CXVl

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare

the implicit debt to Shakespeare in Barrett Browning
is worth noting, they sound very much alike, unlike
alone, it would at first appear, in gender

Richard

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July 5, 2012

Xlll. And wilt thou have me fashion into speech – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_________________________

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

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June 29, 2012

Xll. Indeed this very love which is my boast – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Xll. Indeed this very love which is my boast

Indeed this very love which is my boast,
And which, when rising up from breast to brow,
Doth crown me with a ruby large enow
To draw men’s eyes and prove the inner cost, –
This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost,
I should not love withal, unless that thou
Hadst set me an example, shown me how,
When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed,
And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak
Of love even, as a good thing of my own:
Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak,
And placed it by thee on a golden throne, –
And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!)
Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

_______________________

though the sonnet has a history going back to the
13th Century, English poets probably found their
soul spring in Shakespeare, all CLlV of his seminal
blueprints

you’ll notice the order of rhymes, the set number of
lines of verse, 14, are the same, Barrett Browning
hides however her consonant sounds by blurring
the meter as she forces it into the following line by
the dictates of correct grammar and meaning

the result is Romantic urgency, instead of the more
controlled poetry of a ceremonious, therefore less
indulgent, more rigidly formal, monarchic court, and
age

majesty has ceded here to democracy, for better
or for worse

Richard

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June 26, 2012

Xl. And therefore if to love can be desert – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

Xl. And therefore if to love can be desert…

And therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart, –
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now ‘gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music, — why advert
To these things? O Beloved, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace
To live on still in love, and yet in vain, –
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

____________________

“desert” here, as in “just deserts”, to get what one
deserves, and not incidentally “Just Desserts”, the
sweets emporia, is an example of the affectations of
Romantic poetry that used to annoy me and turn me
away, so that I quickly lost my curiosity as to its
proponents, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Rimbaud, Verlaine,
Baudelaire, were all too ornate, and abstruse, obscure,
for me to see anything but artifice and decoration,
when I required clarity and direction as a young pup

here and there an idea struck a chord that would not
not reverberate, about Truth and Beauty for instance,
or “They also serve who only stand and wait“, and of
course the plangent “How do I love thee? Let me
count the ways“, which had none of these infringing
pretensions

it took me a while to understand that this was the idiom
of another age, that poetry could transcend its heritage
and become relevant

urgent

vital

Aornus, I ask you, is a mountain in, of all places, India,
which Alexander purportedly conquered way before
our time

to “advert/To” is to refer to

despite these irritations, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
remains unexpectedly direct and even still poignant
in her self-disparagement, her self-abnegation, even
after eleven poems, perhaps because she touches,
beyond the idiosyncracies of self-conscious style,
masochistic maybe even neurosis, an underlying
true chord of love in all its quivering manifestations,
one of our major ever existential concerns

Richard

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June 3, 2012

X. Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

X. Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful…

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; and equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee … mark! … I love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

___________________

we are witness to the “transfigur[ation]“ that occurs at
the conferment of love, the sacred trust one receives of
infinite empathy for another, others, in order to glimpse
maybe something of the mystical dimensions of our
universe, the place within it of miracles, should one
chance to go there

and it is, well, transformational, a quantum leap of the
very soul

note structurally the rush of emotion that blurs a
usually dominant rhyme, the stop for breath in the
very middle of a verse instead of its usual place at
the end of the line, to suggest the lost parameters,
the breached social norms, of her emotion

note the urgency of her sentiment – “I love thee …
mark! … I love thee” – despite being “the lowest”,
and being unworthy under normal conditions of
even being heard

yet she is aware, cognizant, that this grace she
has received changes the world – “How that great
work of Love enhances Nature’s.” – her “new rays”
burn ever bright, a constant flame keeping vigil at
her lover’s altar, and sheds light thereby, hope and,
it appears, undying inspiration, on all of us

wow, man

note also, incidentally, how, this time, there is not
a word about him, even a descriptive trait, except
as a necessary, though maybe incidental, catalyst,
a primal engine

we’ll see

Richard

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June 1, 2012

lX. Can it be right to give what I can give? – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

from “Sonnets from the Portuguese“

lX. Can it be right to give what I can give?…

Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love — which were unjust.
Belovèd, I love only thee! let it pass.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

________________________

though it might seem unworthy, this is my condition,
she says, I have only my misery to offer, and my
intemperate, ineradicable, love, my very destiny,
should it be of any consequence, best were for you,
therefore, to move on

at which her abnegation brought me to a shiver, and,
marvelously, to, in my very body, compassion

there is something awesome, even sacred, in this
unbound sincerity

Richard

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