And therefore if to love can be desert,
I am not all unworthy. Cheeks as pale
As these you see, and trembling knees that fail
To bear the burden of a heavy heart,—
This weary minstrel-life that once was girt
To climb Aornus, and can scarce avail
To pipe now ’gainst the valley nightingale
A melancholy music,—why advert
To these things? O Belovëd, it is plain
I am not of thy worth nor for thy place!
And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace
To live on still in love, and yet in vain,—
To bless thee, yet renounce thee to thy face.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Notes on "And therefore if to love can be desert"
This is poem number XI (11) of Sonnets from the
Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett for Robert Browning in the 1840s, during their courtship. Here, she is still
insisting that their love is hopeless: She is older than him and an invalid.
Aornus was a supposedly impregnable rock fortress in
ancient India, now Pakistan, that according to legend, stood against the god Krishna. Alexander the great resolved to
take it, and did apparently conquer it. "To climb Aornus"
therefore means, to undertake great deeds of bravery.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) is now best remembered for her
"Sonnets from the Portuguese," a cycle of sonnets written during her courtship with Robert Browning.
In fact however, she was an accomplished poet before she met Browning.
Most of her poems were not about romantic love.
They were topical poems about political issues such as child labor, slavery and the Italian national cause.
Elizabeth Barrett was a "hopeless" invalid and recluse, six years older than Robert Browning. They were happily married and had a son.
The fame of the poets, and the fairy-tale story of the girl who was thought to be doomed to be an old maid,
rescued from a loveless existence and brought back to life and
the world by a gallant suitor, kindled the imagination of the public.
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