Loading...
Loading...
Loading revision…
Loading poetry…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850) · Eduqas Poetry Anthology
Eduqasby Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was one of the most celebrated poets of her day. For years she lived largely as an invalid in her father’s house in London.
In January 1845 the poet Robert Browning wrote to her, admiring her poems. They met that May, and in September 1846 they married in secret and left for Italy. Her father, who did not want his children to marry, never forgave her.
Sonnet 29 comes from Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of 44 love sonnets she wrote during the courtship and published in 1850. The title made the poems look like translations from Portuguese, though they are her own. Most of the famous love sonnets before hers had been written by men about women; here a woman speaks her own desire, and it is the man who is described, as a "palm-tree".
“I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud”
The exclamation announces her love; the metaphor that follows makes her thoughts a climbing plant that "twine" around him and "bud". Love is growing, but it is also starting to cover him.
“Except the straggling green which hides the wood”
Her thoughts have grown so thick that they hide the beloved, "the wood" of the tree. "straggling" makes the growth untidy and out of control: imagining him has taken the place of the man.
“Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood”
The turn comes early. "Yet" sets her against her own thoughts, and "O my palm-tree" names the beloved as tall, strong and upright. The formal "be it understood" sounds like a declaration she wants on record.
“Who art dearer, better!”
Two comparatives and an exclamation: the real man is "dearer" and "better" than any thought of him. The broken rhythm of the line suggests that feeling has overtaken her.
“Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should”
A direct command. A Victorian woman asks for what she wants, and the man is cast as the "strong tree" whose part is to act. Love here means presence, not distant longing.
“Drop heavily down,—burst, shattered, everywhere!”
The most violent line in the poem. Heavy stresses, a dash and a string of verbs ("burst, shattered") break the line as the imagined greenery falls away. Her thoughts must be destroyed for the real man to be seen.
“I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.”
The paradox resolves the poem. Thinking of him was a sign of absence; when he is near, she has no need to. The final "thee" puts the beloved in the last word of the poem.
“my thoughts do twine and bud / About thee, as wild vines, about a tree”
Her thoughts are vines and the beloved a tree. The metaphor runs through the octave and into the sestet, where the tree is told to shake the vines off. Longing becomes growth that smothers what it loves.
“Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood”
She speaks to him directly, with the "O" of formal address and the private name "my palm-tree". The address turns the poem from description to demand.
“Rather, instantly / Renew thy presence”
The verbs of command ("Renew", "Rustle", "set", "let") give the woman the active voice. The sentence runs across the end of the octave, pushing the turn earlier than the form expects.
“Drop heavily down,—burst, shattered, everywhere!”
The dash and commas break the line into pieces, so its sound enacts what it describes: leaves bursting and scattering. The exclamation ends it in triumph.
“insphere thee … hear thee … near thee”
The D rhymes of the sestet end on an extra, unstressed "thee". The beloved is placed at the end of lines 10, 12 and 14, and the poem ends on him.
“I think of thee! … I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.”
The last line contradicts the first, and both are true. The poem travels from thinking about him in absence to being with him, where thought gives way to presence.