In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 27” from Sonnets from the Portuguese, the speaker again dramatizes the contrast between how her life was before she met her belovèd and how it is now that she has found the love of her life.
First Quatrain: “My dear Belovèd, who hast lifted me”
The speaker addresses her belovèd directly, telling him again about how he came to her at her lowest point of depression. He raised her from the depths of despair which she describes as “this drear flat of earth where I was thrown.” Life has been so cruel to her that she was not only sinking but was “thrown” to her lowest level.
Even her hair had become limp and lifeless as her “languid ringlets” attested, until her lover had “blown / A life-breath” and her forehead would finally come alive with brightness.
Second Quatrain: “Shines out again, as all the angels see”
After her beloved kissed her pale forehead, she was infused with the hope that she would brighten, “as all the angels see.” She then exclaims and repeats, “My own, my own”; he is now her own belovèd who has entered her life at a time when there seemed to be nothing in the world to live for.
This sonnet, unfortunately, sounds as if the speaker has chosen her human lover over God.
She reports that she sought “only God,” before her belovèd’s arrival, but then unexpectedly she “found thee!” However, in earlier sonnets, this speaker has made it clear that she is thankful to God for sending her belovèd and that God knows what is appropriate for His children.
First Tercet: “I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad”
The speaker continues to celebrate finding her human lover, reporting the uplifting feelings she now experiences: “I am safe, and strong, and glad.”
The speaker alludes to the Greek mythological positioning of souls in the afterlife, stating “As one who stands in dewless asphodel.” The Asphodel Meadows are located between heaven and hell, and she likens herself to one positioned between the ultimate good and ultimate bad. As she “looks backward” to her old life, she deems that time “tedious” compared to how she feels now.
Second Tercet: “In the upper life,--so I, with bosom-swell”
The speaker now sees herself as one testifying that while “Death” ushers a soul to a different level of being, she has discovered that “Love” does so as well. And her reaction with a “bosom-swell” demonstrates that she is witness to the superior action of love.
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Linda Sue Grimes - As a writer, researcher, and SRF devotee, Linda Sue Grimes has studied poetry and practiced Kriya Yoga for over thirty years..
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