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Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!
I will not gainsay love, called love forsooth:
I have heard love talked in my early youth,
And since, not so long back but that the flowers
Then gathered, smell still. Mussulmans and Giaours
Throw kerchiefs at a smile, and have no ruth
For any weeping. Polypheme’s white tooth
Slips on the nut if, after frequent showers,
The shell is over-smooth,—and not so much
Will turn the thing called love, aside to hate
Or else to oblivion. But thou art not such
A lover, my Belovëd! thou canst wait
Through sorrow and sickness, to bring souls to touch,
And think it soon when others cry “Too late.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Notes on "Oh, yes! they love through all this world of ours!"
This is poem number XL (40) of Sonnets from the
Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett for Robert Browning in the 1840s, during their courtship. Browning's love, says
the sonnet, is not the light and frivolous thing that others call love, turned away by the least difficulty.
Giaours is
the Turkish and Persian word for non-Muslim "infidels," especially applied to Christians.
"ruth" means compassion or pity.
Polypheme - apparently a reference to Polyphemus.
Though he is introduced as a villainous giant in the Odyssey, the poet Theocritus, mentioned in the first sonnet (I thought once how Theocritus had sung)
by Elizabeth, had a version of Polyphemus as a gentle shepherd, in love with Galatea, who solaces his unrequited love in
song.
And think it soon when others cry “Too late.” -
he was willing to marry Elizabeth when she was about 40 years old, generally considered "too late."
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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