Sonnets from the Portuguese 28: My Letters!
Sonnets from the Portuguese 28: My Letters!
Original Text
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Poems. 4th edn. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1856. PR 4180 E44a ROBA
1My letters! all dead paper, ... mute and white ! --
2And yet they seem alive and quivering
3Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
4And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
5This said, ... he wished to have me in his sight
6Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
7To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,
8Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...
9Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed
10As if God's future thundered on my past.
11This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled
12With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
13And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed,
14If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
Publication Start Year
1850
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
Not in printed RP.
Form