Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 29” from Sonnets from the Portuguese dramatizes the closeness of the speaker with her belovèd. Even as her thoughts encircle him, she insists that ultimately she is so closely united with him that she need not think of him at all. They share a special bond that keeps them together.
First Quatrain: “I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud”
The speaker addresses her belovèd, telling him, “I think of thee!” She then goes on to describe the scene that her thoughts of him create. Her thoughts are like a growing vine that wraps around him as a Morning Glory vine might grow up around and encircle a tree or fence-post.
She likens her foliage-thoughts to that vine wrapping “about a tree” and as it grows up the tree, it “put[s] out broad leaves.” The leaves soon cover the tree until there is nothing visible except the vine. The wood of the tree has completely vanished under the cover of the vine.
Second Quatrain: “Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood”
The speaker then shrieks in horror that her thoughts have obliterated her belovèd, for she does not wish for that to happen. She exclaims, addressing him, “O, my palm-tree,” and insisting that she does not intend for the thoughts to obliterate him. She asserts that he is “dearer, better” than her thoughts.
She then commands him to dislodge himself from her thoughts, so that he will once again shine through. He is strong as a tree is strong, and the wood of the tree should always shine through the obtrusive vines, regardless of how prolific their foliage.
First Tercet: “Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare”
The speaker continues her command, insisting that he “rustle thy boughs and set they trunk all bare.” She wants him to extricate himself from her thoughts and become the living presence that she so adores.
She insists that he break “these bands of greenery” that have encircled him, so that the greenery will fall in a heap, “heavily down,—burst, shattered, everywhere!” Her little drama succinctly reveals the heated passion of her love for her belovèd.
Second Tercet: “Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee”
Finally, the speaker affirms her passion by revealing how desirous she is of merely “breath[ing] within thy shadow a new air.” Her thoughts that wrap and cover her belovèd merely represent the closeness she enjoys with him; she is so close to him that she need not think of him at all, because she insists, “I am too near thee.”
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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