I bet you thought that this would be a sonnet.
If we’re honest, they are my usual haunt,
while for you, a monologue’s the thing:
tragedy, mock epics, too many soliloquies,
apostrophes,
for the small and humble
form I make my home.
This is not a sonnet.
It’s something more like
a letter,
like our letters,
dashed off between dinner parties (yours)
and doctor’s visits (mine).
“I love your poetry,
and I love you too,”
you wrote, having never seen
my face. And yet
you loved my form.
(I mean, of course, my sonnets.)
How could you have known so soon?
What in the turning
of a line aligned
your mind with mine?
I confess I am surprised. I had not
thought my words had power
quite like this.
Your poems, yes,
which work out wonders
on an unassuming page,
as a thousand unthought
threads enwreath your brow
like golden
laurel leaves.
But mine? Simple, timid
poesies composed on
nymphs and trees, bedridden
by my homebound intellect.
“There she goes again, writing
about ivy and Echo and pretending
that she knows the Greek.”
My soul is too wracked
by anxieties, cast
in too much shadow
to deliver brightness
that delights.
And yet
delight you do,
intrusive (almost) in your
eagerness to throw open
the shutters of my heart and cast
your sight like sunlight on the empty room.
Now that your searching eye has
by its glittering rays illuminated
the interior to my sight,
I can see that you forgot
your coat. It hangs, folded,
on a chair, and perhaps
I will return it.
Or perhaps I’ll keep it for a while:
a subtle proof that my Apollo must return.
These slightest imprints I ascribe
as prophetic signs that our lives
may intertwine, align
your mind with mine.
Another poem from the archive. If you’ve never read Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning’s letters, they’re some of the most beautiful love letters in the literary tradition.
“I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,—and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,—whatever else, no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing: since the day last week when I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning and turning again in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me…I do, as I say, love these Books with all my heart—and I love you too.” R.B.
“[A]lthough I am aware that you unconsciously exaggerate what I can be to you, yet it is delightful to be broad awake & think of you as my friend.” E.B
“You seem to have drunken of the cup of life full, with the sun shining on it. I have lived only inwardly,—or with sorrow, for a strong emotion. Before this seclusion of my illness, I was secluded still—& there are few of the youngest women in the world who have not seen more, heard more, known more, of society, than I, who am scarcely to be called young now.” E.B
“[Y]ou do what I always wanted, hoped to do, and only seem now likely to do for the first time—you speak out, you, —I only make men & women speak,—give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me…” R.B.
“I admire such qualities as [R.B.] has—fortitude, integrity. I loved him for his courage in adverse circumstances which were yet felt by him more literally than I could feel them.” E.B.
Truth is the strong thing. Let man’s life be true!
And love’s the truth of mine. Time prove the rest
I choose to have you stamped all over me,
Your name upon my forehead and my breast,
You, from the sword’s blade to the ribbon’s edge,
That men may see, all over, you in me…
- Monologue from “In the Balcony”, Robert Browning
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
I love her for her smile ... her look ... her way
Of speaking gently, ... for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.
- Sonnets from the Portuguese 14, Elizabeth Barrett Browning