You'll love me yet!--and I can tarry
Your love's protracted growing:
June reared that bunch of flowers you carry,
From seeds of April's sowing.
I plant a heartful now: some seed
At least is sure to strike,
And yield--what you'll not pluck indeed,
Not love, but, may be, like.
You'll look at least on love's remains,
A grave's one violet:
Your look?--that pays a thousand pains.
What's death? You'll love me yet!
Overhead the tree-tops meet,
Flowers and grass spring 'neath one's feet;
There was nought above me, nought below,
My childhood had not learned to know:
For, what are the voices of birds
--Ay, and of beasts,--but words, our words,
Only so much more sweet?
The knowledge of that with my life begun.
But I had so near made out the sun,
And counted your stars, the seven and one,
Like the fingers of my hand:
Nay, I could all but understand
Wherefore through heaven the white moon ranges;
And just when out of her soft fifty changes
No unfamiliar face might overlook me--
Suddenly God took me.
Robert Browning
Notes on " You'll love me
yet!--and I can tarry"
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was not a love poet as such. For the most part, he wrote historical and narrative poems and various experimental poetry in the form of dramatic monologues. His
romantic courtship and secret marriage to Elizabeth Barrett
made him a celebrated figure of romantic love poetry however.
Elizabeth Barrett was a recluse, a semi-invalid and her
father had forbidden her to marry.
rowning's insistent courtship finally won her over, they were married, at first in secret to evade her father. You
might think that "You'll love me yet!" is about the Barrett- Browning courtship, and it certainly seems so. Browning's
poem is the epitome of the romantic belief in persistence and love that never dies. But "You'll love me yet!" was written
as part of a verse play, Pippa Passes, in 1841, four years before Browning was known to have met Elizabeth Barrett!
Unless they had met in secret, this poem, and the Barrett-Browning courtship, is an interesting example of life
imitating art, or a self-fulfilling life program. Browning was true to his poetry, though at the end of his life he
seems to have renounced romantic love.
Robert Browning (1812-1889) was a prolific poet of the victorian age. He did not achieve fame, however, until relatively late in life. His unconventional style and experimentation tended to confuse Victorian readers. His fascination with horror tales is in some ways reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe.
He is perhaps most famous today for his marriage to Elizabeth Barrett. He published a volume that included love poems, Men and Women, in 1855. Some of these poems were later recognized as masterpieces. His 20,000 line The Ring and the Book published in 1868 and 1869, was evidently inspired by Elizabeth Barrett, and achieved the fame that had eluded him earlier.
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