| It is worth reminding ourselves that these poems were not
written with a view to publication. Robert himself did not even know of their existence
till three years after their marriage. The deliberately confusing name "Son-nets from
the Portuguese" was chosen to echo the folktale lovers Catarina and Camoens, who
loved from afar, and about whom Elizabeth had written in 1844. |
IX
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 spoil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love . . . which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass. |
| After so much torment, comes the transfiguration, and a
major key ..... 
Fred. A. Mayer
|
X
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax. An 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
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. |
| ... carried on in the more confident and assured tone of
this lovely sonnet, which mirrors a letter from Robert, in which he writes: "I love
you because I love you .... I think of you all day long, because I most certainly
could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried ..." |
XIV
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. |
In November 1845 Robert writes
"Give me, dearest beyond expression, what I have always dared to think I would ask
you for .. one day! ... a lock of your hair."
It had been the death of her mother in 1840, along with that of her grandmother, uncle and
brother Sam that so broke Elizabeth’s spirit and heart, and to some extent even her
will to live. |
XVIII
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. |
|
