Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the English Sonnet

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the

English Sonnet

BY DR. D. W. DODWELL I.C.S. ¹

"A soul of fire enclosed in a shell of pearl." This is how an American friend described Mrs. Browning, of whose death today is the seventy-seventh anniversary. Another American wrote of her: "She is a great loss to literature, to Italy, and to the world–the greatest poet among women. What energy and fire there was in that little frame, and what burning words were winged by her pen! With that glorious courage she attacked error, however strongly entrenched by custom, how bravely she stood by her principles! Never did I see anyone whose brow the world hurried and crowded so to crown who had so little vanity and so much pure humility."

That Mrs. Browning is the greatest woman poet among those who have written in English can hardly be disputed, and it is unlikely, I think, that any other literature possesses a woman poet who is her equal. Her finest achievement is probably the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese.’ This series of forty-four sonnets describes with exquisite sincerity and tenderness the development of her feelings towards Robert Browning up to the time of their secret marriage, when she escaped at the age of forty from the tyranny of her barbaric father and her chronic ill-health to a life of freedom, achievement and perfect happiness in Italy. Her love story is like a fairy tale come true.

Browning insisted that the sonnets ought to be published, since they were too good to be withheld from the public. In those early Victorian days his wife thought that to publish such frank expressions of her innermost feelings would appear immodest, so she chose the title ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’ in order to give the poems the appearance of being translations.

Almost all these sonnets are of a high order of excellence and there is no special one which stands out strikingly above the rest. I have chosen no. 43, the last but one in the series to read to you as a typical example of Mrs. Browning’s best sonnets:

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 every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;

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.

The sonnet is a short poem of fourteen lines with a special rhyme pattern first used with great effect by Petrarch and other Italian Renaissance poets. Mrs. Browning’s devotion to Italy makes it very fitting that her greatest work should be in the form of sonnets. Though it was born in Italy, the sonnet soon became naturalised in England, and has been a favourite form of expression with many of our poets. A few of them in an occasional sonnet reach even greater heights than those of the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese,’ but there is no other great sonnet-sequence in English except Shakespeare’s.

Now I will read some more of my favourite sonnets, taking them in chronological order. First comes Shakespeare’s sonnet on true love, which many people consider to be the most beautiful sonnet ever written:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! It is an ever-fixed mark,

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand’ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom: -

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

You may have noticed that, both in this and in Mrs. Browning’s sonnet, some of the rhymes are not perfect, but it in no way detracts from their beauty as a whole.

Here is another very fine sonnet by another Elizabethan; ‘The Parting,’ by Michael Drayton:

Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part–

Nay, I have done, you get no more of me;

And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,

That thus so cleanly I myself can free.

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,

And when we meet at any time again,

Be it not seen on either of our brows

That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of love’s latest breath,

When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,

When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,

And Innocence is closing up his eyes,

–Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over,

From death to life, thou might’st him yet recover.

The Elizabethan sonnet was made up of three stanzas of four lines, and a couplet at the end; but Milton went back to the original Italian form with its division into an octet of eight lines followed by a sextet of six lines. His famous sonnet entitled ‘On the Late Massacre in Piedmont’ sounds like trumpets calling to battle or an avalanche sweeping down the mountains:

Avenge, O Lord! Thy slaughter’d Saints, whose bones

Lie scatter’d on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old

When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones,

Forget not: In Thy book record their groans

Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold

Slain by the blood Piedmontese, that roll’d

Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow

O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant, that from these may grow

A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way,

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

Equally majestic and moving, but in a very different mood is Milton’s sonnet, ‘On his Blindness’:

When I consider how my light is spent,

E’er half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide,

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide,–

Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?

I fondly ask:–But Patience, to prevent

That murmur soon replies; God doth not need

Either man’s work, or His own gifts: who best

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best; His state

Is kingly; thousands at His bidding speed

And post o’er land and ocean without rest:–

They also serve who only stand and wait.

Wordsworth wrote many sonnets. The one I like best is called ‘Upon Westminster Bridge,’ and describes the quiet beauty of London and the Thames in the early morning:

Earth has not anything to show more fair:

Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

A sight so touching in its majesty:

This City now doth like a garment wear

The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Never did sun more beautifully steep

In his first splendour valley, rock or hill;

Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

The river glideth at his own sweet will:

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still.

A specially beautiful and striking first line is always a strong point in a sonnet. Keats certainly achieved it in his sonnet, ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’:

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes

He stared at the Pacific–and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise–

Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Other women poets of the nineteenth century, besides Mrs. Browning, have written beautiful sonnets. Here is one called ‘Remember’ by Christina Rossetti:

Remember me when I am gone away,

Gone far away into the silent land;

When you can no more hold me by the hand

Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.

Remember me when no more day by day

You tell me of our future that you plann’d:

Only remember me; you understand

It will be late to counsel then or pray.

Yet if you should forget me for a while

And afterwards remember, do not grieve:

For if the darkness and corruption leave

A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,

Better by far you should forget and smile

Than that you should remember and be sad.

My last sonnet from the nineteenth century is by yet another woman poet. Alice Meynell’s ‘Renouncement’ is undoubtedly one of the loveliest of all sonnets:

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

I shun the love that lurks in all delight–

The love of thee–and in the blue heaven’s height,

And in the dearest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng

This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;

But it must never, never come in sight;

I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away,–

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gather’d to thy heart.

So far, the most famous sonnets of the twentieth century are perhaps those of Rupert Brooke, and how one wishes that he had been spared to write more! I will read you the one called ‘The Dead’:

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,

Washed marvelously with sorrow, swift to mirth.

The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,

And sunset, and the colours of the earth.

These had seen movement, and heard music; known

Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;

Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;

Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter

And lit by the rich skies all day. And after

Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance

And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white

Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,

A width, a shining peace, under the night.

The last two sonnets which I shall read were written in India. This one is by Harindranath Chattopadhyaya:

How like a ship upon a shoreless main

I voyage with dread blank on every side.

A grey monotony of chilly rain

Unchangingly along the changing tide

Heaves hugely...yet, within myself I hide

Eternal voyagers who seek again

The light, more beautiful than any bride

Starring stupendous heavens without a stain.

Billow on clashing billow, see me climb

Each time with greater sureness than before,

While the wide challenging waters round me chime

Enormous rhythms of the Evermore.

And since the ship takes no account of time,

Mileage exists not, nor a sense of shore.

I will finish up with "a poor thing but mine own," called ‘To one who loves me’:

Time shall not rob us of the golden hours

We’ve spent together. They shall ever be

Stored safely in my inmost treasury

Of choicest gifts and never-fading flowers.

Wilt thou too treasure all that has been ours,

Or, when thou art so far beyond the sea,

Forget these days and thy deep love for me?

Nay, thou cans’t ne’er forget! Thanks to those powers

Who joined our destinies in lives long past,

Love’s silken cords will always hold us fast,

And never fail to guide us through the maze

Until we meet. So shall I sing thy praise

When each new time of happiness arrives

Through this life and the endless chain of lives.

^{1 Broadcast from Madras on the 29th of June, published in ‘Triveni by courtesy of the All India Radio.
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