RPO -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning : Sonnets from the Portuguese: XL

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

Sonnets from the Portuguese: XL

1Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!

2I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth:

3I have heard love talked in my early youth,

4And since, not so long back but that the flowers

5Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours

6Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth

7For any weeping. Polypheme’s white tooth

8Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers,

9The shell is over-smooth,—and not so much

10Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate

11Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such

12A lover, my Belovèd! thou canst wait

13Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,

14And think it soon when others cry “Too late.”

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Sonnets from the Portuguese: XLI

Notes

5] Mussulmans: Muslims
Giaours: a Turkish name for non-Muslims, especially Christians, usually meant reproachfully

7] Polypheme’s white tooth: Polyphemus was the cyclops from the Odyssey, blinded by Odysseus. The story of Polyphemus eating a nut is untraced.

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