This is another Sweeter Word Sunday dedicated to Elizabeth
Barrett Brownings.
Best Wishes.
Songs of the Portuguense by Elizabeth Barrett Brownings
Sonnet 9
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 be 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 give thee any love - which were
unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.
Sonnet 26
I LIVED with visions for my company
Instead of men and women, years ago,
And found them gentle mates, not
thought to know
A sweeter music than they played to
me.
But soon their trailing purple was not
free
Of this world's dust, their lutes did
silent grow,
And I myself grew faint and blind below
Their vanishing eyes. Then THOU didst
come - to be,
Beloved, what they seemed. Their
shining fronts,
Their songs, their splendors (better, yet
the same,
As river-water hallowed into fonts),
Met in thee, and from out thee over
came
My soul with satisfaction of all wants:
Because God's gifts put man's best
dreams to shame.
Sonnet 29
I THINK of thee! - my thoughts do twine
and bud
About thee, as wild wines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there's
nought to see
Except the straggling green which hides
the wood.
Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood
I will not have my thoughts instead of
thee
Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly
Renew thy presence; as a strong three
should,
Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all
bare,
And let these band s of greenery which
insphere thee
Drop heavily down, - burst, shattered,
everything where!
Because, in this deep joy to see and hear
thee
And breather within thy shadow a new
air
I do not think of thee - I am too near
thee.
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