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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese: XXIII


              1Is it indeed so?  If I lay here dead,
              2Wouldst thou miss any life in losing mine?
              3And would the sun for thee more coldly shine
              4Because of grave-damps falling round my head?
              5I marvelled, my Belovèd, when I read
              6Thy thought so in the letter.  I am thine—
              7But . . .  so much to thee?  Can I pour thy wine
              8While my hands tremble?  Then my soul, instead
              9Of dreams of death, resumes life’s lower range.
            10Then, love me, Love! look on me—breathe on me!
            11As brighter ladies do not count it strange,
            12For love, to give up acres and degree,
            13I yield the grave for thy sake, and exchange
            14My near sweet view of heaven, for earth with thee!

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Sonnets from the Portuguese: XXII 		next poem in the collection
Sonnets from the Portuguese: XXIV

Notes

12] to give up acres and degree: If a woman in the mid-nineteenth century married a man below her in social status, she might have to give up her own social status and any lands and money associated with it.

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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