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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese: XVIII


              1I never gave a lock of hair away
              2To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
              3Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
              4I ring out to the full brown length and say
              5“Take it.”  My day of youth went yesterday;
              6My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
              7Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,
              8As girls do, any more: it only may
              9Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
            10Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
            11Through sorrow’s trick.  I thought the funeral-shears
            12Would take this first, but Love is justified,—
            13Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years,
            14The kiss my mother left here when she died.

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Sonnets from the Portuguese: XIX

Notes

1] a lock of hair: this was treasured as a very personal gift from one person to another

11] funeral-shears: scissors used to cut a lock of hair from a dead person’s head, by which others may treasure the dead person’s memory

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: A Selection from the Poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. First Series. New Edition. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1886. 1: 181-202.
First publication date: 1850
RPO poem editor: Marc R. Plamondon
RP edition: 2007
Recent editing: 2:2007/11/24

Composition date: 1846
Form: sonnet

Other poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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