Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make
Of all that strong divineness which I know
For thine and thee, an image only so
Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.
It is that distant years which did not take
Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,
Have forced my swimming brain to undergo
Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake
Thy purity of likeness and distort
Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit.
As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to commemorate,
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Notes on "Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make"
This is poem number XXXVII (37) of Sonnets from the
Portuguese, written by Elizabeth Barrett for Robert Browning in the 1840s, during their courtship. She is asking pardon
for previous doubts (see When we met first and loved, I did not build).
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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