Sonnets from the Portuguese
()
About this ebook
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was an English poet. The daughter of a wealthy family—her father made his fortune as a slave owner in Jamaica, while her mother’s family owned and operated sugar plantations, mills, and ships—Browning eventually became an abolitionist and advocate for child labor laws. Her marriage to the prominent Victorian poet Robert Browning caused the final break between Browning and her family, after which she moved to Italy and lived there with Robert for the rest of her life. She began writing poems at a young age, finding success with the 1844 publication of Poems. Browning went on to be recognized as one of the foremost poets of early Victorian England, influencing such writers as Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is most famous for her Sonnets from the Portuguese, a collection of 44 love poems published in 1850, and Aurora Leigh, an 1856 epic poem described by leading Victorian critic John Ruskin as the greatest long poem written in the nineteenth century. Browning suffered from numerous illnesses throughout her life, eventually succumbing in Florence at the age of 55.
Read more from Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Collected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Elizabeth Barrett Browning, The Poetry Of Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aurora Leigh: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poetry Hour - Volume 1: Time For The Soul Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Promtheus Bound: A Translation Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Battle of Marathon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of Love. Speaking from the Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poets, 12 Poems, 1 Topic ― Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry Of Kissing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetry of Nature - Volume 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSonnets from the Portuguese Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Sonnets from the Portuguese
Related ebooks
Sonnets from the Portuguese Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSonnets from the Portuguese and Other Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In Memoriam A. H. H. Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lays and Legends (Second Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Passion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmores Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove Poems and Others Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmores: “Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself. ” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Memoriam A. H. H. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSongs of Two Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLays and legends (Second Series) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDear All Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTestament Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVenus and Adonis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo the Moon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amores Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rhyme A Dozen - 12 Poets, 12 Poems, 1 Topic ― Lesbian Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDickinson on Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Deluge, and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLove and Shadows Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHis Lady of the Sonnets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Poems of John Donne Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles: Delia - Diana Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Flowers of Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Woman of Thirty Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArtemis to Actaeon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTo My Husband and Other Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSea Foam Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFlight Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Better Be Lightning Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (ReadOn Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Sonnets from the Portuguese
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Sonnets from the Portuguese - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
XLIV
I
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—
Guess now who holds thee!
—Death,
I said, But, there,
The silver answer rang, Not Death, but Love.
II
But only three in all God’s universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,—Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,—that if I had died,
The death-weights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. Nay
is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.
III
Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering