It’s the last week of our ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ readalong, with just 42,43 and 44 left. Elizabeth Barrett Browning has been using this sonnet sequence to feel her way towards a relationship with Robert Browning – we’ve seen her process his declaration of love, analyse her own feelings, fret that she is not a suitable match, renounce him, fail, let romance kindle, and chart their growing intimacy. At the same time, she has been writing within the sonnet tradition, both alluding to and subverting the largely male canon. Biographers suggest that these sonnets were not shown to Robert until much later, but it’s hard not to assume she would have used some of the lines on him. The sequence feels like an act of self-fashioning – of practising and trying on a new self before she commits.

XLII

My future will not copy fair my past—
I wrote that once; and thinking at my side
My ministering life-angel justified
The word by his appealing look upcast
To the white throne of God, I turned at last,
And there, instead, saw thee, not unallied
To angels in thy soul!  Then I, long tried
By natural ills, received the comfort fast,
While budding, at thy sight, my pilgrim’s staff
Gave out green leaves with morning dews impearled.
I seek no copy now of life’s first half:
Leave here the pages with long musing curled,
And write me new my future’s epigraph,
New angel mine, unhoped for in the world!

It’s a wonderful first line. EBB thought the second half of her life would mirror the first: she would be bedbound, ill, alone. But her story truly did have a second act. Following her wedding to Robert, she was indeed disinherited by her father. But the couple moved to Italy, where her health greatly improved, and they had a treasured son called Pen.

There is an absolutely gorgeous passage in Virginia Woolf’s Flush, told from the perspective of EBB’s dog, which shows how different her ‘life’s first half’ and it’s second truly were. Having arrived with the married couple in Pisa, Flush observes:

She was a different person altogether. Now, for instance, instead of sipping a thimbleful of port and complaining of a headache, she tossed off a tumbler of Chianti and slept the sounder. There was a flowering branch of oranges on the dinner table instead of one denuded, sour, yellow fruit. […] Instead of sitting in a carriage and rumbling along Oxford Street, they rattled off in a ramshackle fly to the borders of a lake and looked at mountains; and when she was tired she did not hail another cab; she sat on a stone and watched the lizards.

She left behind what Woolf describes as ‘poor, dull, damp, sunless, joyless, expensive, conventional England’. (Also, just to digress, you could argue that Flush himself was another ‘ministering life-angel’ who helped her through this transition – see this delightful poem EBB wrote to him).

(an image of EBB and Flush from Look and Learn)

To return to this sonnet though, it dramatizes the moment of leaving home, as our bookworm finally sets aside her ‘pages with long musing curled’. She is putting down the tomes and stepping into the real world, like a librarian in an old movie taking off her glasses and shaking out her hair… Though Elizabeth Barrett Browning also can’t resist one last bookish metaphor: her beloved will ‘write me new my future’s epigraph’.

Of course she doesn’t know yet of all the wonderful adventures in Europe that await, but she knows something big has shifted. Whatever is coming, it will be different - her beloved will start her off in an entirely different tone.

I love the last line too – that possessive ‘new angel mine’, made all the more precious by being ‘unhoped for’ – beyond any dream.

And then, the penultimate poem:

XLIII

How do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

It’s good, right? It is undeniably the best of her sonnets, but its also worth noting it’s so successful because it stands alone in a way so many of the other Sonnets from the Portuguese fail to. There’s nothing about her being a poet in love with a poet; there’s nothing about her being bedbound, or her responsibilities to her father, or any of the other complicated backstory. It’s not all weird about hair. It’s a bit religious, but not too religious. It has hardly dated at all, which is why it’s still read so often today and weddings and funerals.

The technique of anaphora, repeating the beginnings of lines (‘I love thee…’) is a rhetorical device, and makes it perfect for such public proclamations. This is the poetic equivalent of wedding vows: a spoken promise to have and hold.

‘I love thee with a love I seemed to lose…’ is also perhaps a key to this poem’s success. It feels like a poem of mature love, rather than youthful love. It comes out of experience and failure. It is a love that seems more precious because it knows that lovers are not immortal. Because, as the last line reminds us, they will both die soon.

And that linebreak!!

                                    I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—

It’s like she’s gulping for air; swallowing tears that shine as she smiles at him (at us).

XLIV

Belovëd, thou hast brought me many flowers
Plucked in the garden, all the summer through,
And winter, and it seemed as if they grew
In this close room, nor missed the sun and showers.
So, in the like name of that love of ours,
Take back these thoughts which here unfolded too,
And which on warm and cold days I withdrew
From my heart’s ground.  Indeed, those beds and bowers
Be overgrown with bitter weeds and rue,
And wait thy weeding; yet here’s eglantine,
Here’s ivy!—take them, as I used to do
Thy flowers, and keep them where they shall not pine.
Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,
And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

Our final poem in this readalong then. And EBB herself has brought us many flowers. These poems are figured here as something grown out of the ‘heart’s ground’. It is a lovely final image: her heart is overgrown with ivy, ‘bitter weeds’ and ‘rue’ – a word that implies regret (‘to rue’). But she hands her bunch of wild blooms to him anyway, and to us, her readers. The last two lines are imperative – she is advising us how to read the sequence. We must ‘instruct’ our eyes to see the ‘colours true’ – to try and take them in the right spirit, and see EBB’s intent rather than impose our own wilful readings upon them. We must also tell our souls ‘their roots are left in mine’. That is: remember how profoundly felt these poems are, and how deep they go.

Other things

-I had the most lovely week teaching at Ty Newydd. It was even sunny enough to swim in the sea. Now I’m turning my thoughts towards my next big work thing, which is Winchester Poetry Festival (Oct 10-12). I’m Artistic Director, and our theme is renewing and remixing canonical poetry, with poets such as Diane Seuss, Luke Kennard, Ismael Mansoor, Fiona Benson, Richard Scott, Mona Arshi, Will Harris, Ruth Padel, Julia Copus and many more exploring Rimbaud, the Ancient Greeks, the bible, Adrienne Rich, Dante, Shakespeare, Marvell, Al Busiri and Bing Xin. There’s will be a Dead [Women] Poets anniversary séance with Joelle Taylor and Mary Jean Chan! A Jazz and Poetry show from Roy McFarlane and Randolph Matthews! Music and Dance from Papia Ghoshal and Abanti Chakrabarty Mukhopadhyay! Modern Poetry Translation Magazine on translating the classics! Online and IRL workshops for all levels! Close readings of favourite poems! And of course the prize ceremonies for Hampshire Young Poets and the Winchester Poetry Prize.

I would obviously love as many people as possible to make it in person – Winchester really is a perfect autumnal literary day out, with the Cathedral, Jane Austen’s burial place and the round table. (Keats even wrote ‘To Autumn’ there). Lots of events are free, and it will be fun to hang out. I’ll be honest: if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a readalong of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s 44 sonnet sequence, you might be our target audience. But if you can’t make it we are also livestreaming our headline events, which will be BSL interpreted.

-My book Lives of the Female Poets also came out this week. Many thanks to all who preordered, and it means a lot to see it popping up on your feeds!

-Phew. I’m a little exhausted after this 14-part series, which went on much longer than I’d hoped. But thanks for all who accompanied me – I hope you got something out of it, and feel a warm glow of achievement knowing you’ve read the whole sonnet sequence in order! I may have to have a pause now whilst I write another children’s book, wish me luck… (and look out for announcements about The Othernauts coming soon).