Sonnets from the PortugueseElizabeth Barrett BrowningOmniClassics · Literature
Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningA sequence of love poems gives hesitation as much expressive force as declaration.
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About the book
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet sequence follows a speaker negotiating the possibility of being loved and answering that love in language. Doubt, gratitude, remembered sorrow, and increasing confidence do not appear as neatly separated stages; they recur as pressures within individual poems. The repeated form makes small shifts in address and argument especially important, allowing a question to become a promise or an apparent refusal to disclose attachment. These are original English poems despite the suggestive title. Readers can enjoy their memorable declarations while also attending to the less settled moments that make those declarations meaningful. The sequence is concerned with what love changes in a person's relation to the world, and with the difficulty of believing that such change can be both real and lasting.
- Love
- Trust and hesitation
- Emotional change
Why read it
For the movement between doubt and affirmation that gives its celebrated love poetry depth and tension.
Original English sonnet sequence