Edmund Spenser
Amoretti, Sonnet 15

Ye tradeful merchants that with weary toil, Do seek most precious things to make your gain: And both the Indias of their treasures spoil, What needeth you to seek so far in vain? For lo my love doth in herself contain All this world’s riches that may far be found, If sapphires, lo her eyes be sapphires plain, If rubies, lo her lips be rubies sound: If pearls, her teeth be pearls both pure and round; If ivory, her forehead ivory ween; If gold, her locks are finest gold on ground; If silver, her fair hands are silver sheen; But that which fairest is, but few behold, Her mind adorned with virtues manifold.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 3

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart! Unlike our uses and our destinies. Our ministering two angels look surprise On one another, as they strike athwart Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink thee, art A guest for queens to social pageantries, With gages from a hundred brighter eyes Than tears even can make mine, to play thy part Of chief musician. What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree? The chrism is on thine head, — on mine, the dew, — And Death must dig the level where these agree.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 6

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forebore — Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Edmund Spenser
Amoretti, Sonnet 75

One day I wrote her name upon the strand But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his pray. Vain man, said she, that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize, For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipèd out likewise. Not so, (quod I) let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 8

What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse? am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I render nothing back at all? Not so, not cold, — but very poor instead. Ask God who knows. For frequent tears have run The colors from my life, and left so dead And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done To give the same as pillow to thy head. Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 9

Can it be right to give what I can give? To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative Through these infrequent smiles which fail to live For all thy adjurations? O my fears, That this can scarce be right! We are not peers, So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, Nor give thee any love—which were unjust. Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

Edmund Spenser
Amoretti, Sonnet 79

Men call you fair and you do credit it, For that yourself ye daily such do see: But the true fair, that is the gentle wit, And virtuous mind, is much more praised of me. For all the rest, however fair it be, Shall turn to naught and lose that glorious hue; But only that is permanent and free From frail corruption, that doth flesh ensue. That is true beauty; that doth argue you To be divine and born of heavenly seed: Derived from that fair Spirit, from whom all true And perfect beauty did at first proceed. He only fair, and what he fair hath made, All other fair like flowers untimely fade.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 10

Yet love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee — in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 12

Indeed this very love which is my boast, And which, when rising up from breast to brow, Doth crown me with a ruby large enow To draw men’s eyes and prove the inner cost, — This love even, all my worth, to the uttermost, I should not love withal, unless that thou Hadst set me an example, shown me how, When first thine earnest eyes with mine were crossed, And love called love. And thus, I cannot speak Of love even, as a good thing of my own: Thy soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak, And placed it by thee on a golden throne, — And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair some-time declines, By chance, or natures changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor loose possession of that fair thou ow’st, Nor shall death brag thou wandr’st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breath or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee,

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 13

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? — I drop it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirit so far off From myself — me — that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, — Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 14

If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love’s sake only. Do not say ‘I love her for her smile — her look — her way Of speaking gently, — for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’ — For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee, — and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheeks dry, — A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love’s sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 87

Farewell thou art too dear for my possessing, And like enough thou knowst thy estimate, The charter of they worth gives thee releasing: My bonds in thee are all determinate. For how do I hold thee but by thy granting, And for that riches where is my deserving? The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting, And so my patent back again is swerving. Thy self thou gav’st, thy own worth then not knowing, Or me to whom thou gav’st it, else mistaking, So thy great gift upon misprision growing, Comes home again, on better judgement making. Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter, In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 16

And yet, because thou overcomest so, Because thou art more noble and like a king, Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow Too close against thine heart henceforth to know How it shook when alone. Why conquering May prove as lordly and complete a thing In lifting upward, as in crushing low! And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword To one who lifts him from the bloody earth, Even so, Belovèd, I at last record, Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth, I rise above abasement at the word. Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 20

Belovèd, my Belovèd, when I think That thou wast in the world a year ago, What time I sat alone here in the snow And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink No moment at thy voice, but, link by link, Went counting all my chains as if that so They never could fall off at any blow Struck by thy possible hand, — why, thus I drink Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful, Never to feel thee thrill the day or night With personal act or speech, — nor ever cull Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull, Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 97

How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year? What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen? What old Decembers bareness everywhere? And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs after their lords decease: Yet this abundant issue seemed to me, But hope of orphans, and unfathered fruit, For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, And thou away, the very birds are mute. Or if they sing, ’tis with so dull a cheer, That leaves look pale, dreading the winter’s near.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 21

Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated Should seem ‘a cuckoo-song,’ as thou dost treat it, Remember, never to the hill or plain, Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed. Belovèd, I, amid the darkness greeted By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain Cry, ‘Speak once more—thou lovest!’ Who can fear Too many stars, thou each in heaven shall roll, Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year? Say thou dost love me, love me, love me — toll The silver iterance! — only minding, Dear, To love me also in silence with thy soul.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 116

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 fixèd 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 Times 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 25

A heavy heart, Belovèd, have I borne From year to year until I saw thy face, And sorrow after sorrow took the place Of all those natural joys as lightly worn As the stringed pearls, each lifted in its turn By a beating heart at dance-time. Hopes apace Were changed to long despairs, till God’s own grace Could scarcely lift above the world forlorn My heavy heart. Then thou didst bid me bring And let it drop adown thy calmly great Deep being! Fast it sinketh, as a thing Which its own nature doth precipitate, While thine doth close above it, mediating Betwixt the stars and the unaccomplished fate.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 27

My own Belovèd, who hast lifted me From this drear flat of earth where I was thrown, And, in betwixt the languid ringlets, blown A life-breath, till the forehead hopefully Shines out again, as all the angels see, Before thy saving kiss! My own, my own Who camest to me when the world was gone, And I who looked for only God, found thee! I find thee; I am safe, and strong, and glad. As one who stands in dewless asphodel Looks backward on the tedious time he had In the upper life, — so I, with bosom-swell, Make witness, here, between the good and bad, That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun, Coral is far more red, then her lips red, If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun: If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head: I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks, And in some perfumes is there more delight, Then in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know, That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks treads on the ground, And yet by heaven I think my love as rare, As any she belied with false compare.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 28

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, — he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! — this, ... the paper’s light ... Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God’s future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine — and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 29

I think of thee! — my thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines, about a tree, Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see Except the straggling green which hides the wood. Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly Renew thy presence, as a strong tree should, Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee Drop heavily down, — burst, shattered, everywhere! Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee And breathe within thy shadow a new air, I do not think of thee — I am too near thee.

John Milton
“On His Deceased Wife”

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove’s great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of childbed taint Purification in the Old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined So clear as in no face with more delight. But, oh! as to embrace me she inclined, I waked, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 30

I see thine image through my tears to-night, And yet to-day I saw thee smiling. How Refer the cause? — Belovèd, is it thou Or I, who makes me sad? The acolyte Amid the chanted joy and thankful rite May so fall flat, with pale insensate brow, On the altar-stair. I hear thy voice and vow, Perplexed, uncertain, since thou art out of sight, As he, in his swooning ears, the choir’s Amen. Belovèd, dost thou love? or did I see all The glory as I dreamed, and fainted when Too vehement light dilated my ideal, For my soul’s eyes? Will that light come again, As now these tears come — falling hot and real?

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 35

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me? Shall I never miss Home-talk and blessing and the common kiss That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange, When I look up, to drop on a new range Of walls and floors, another home than this? Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change? That’s hardest. If to conquer love, has tried, To conquer grief, tries more, as all things prove; For grief indeed is love and grief beside. Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me — wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within the wet wings of thy dove.

Emma Lazarus
“Assurance”

Last night I slept, and when I woke her kiss Still floated on my lips. For we had strayed Together in my dream, through some dim glade, Where the shy moonbeams scarce dared light our bliss. The air was dank with dew, between the trees, The hidden glow-worms kindled and were spent. Cheek pressed to cheek, the cool, the hot night-breeze Mingled our hair, our breath, and came and went, As sporting with our passion. Low and deep Spake in mine ear her voice: “And didst thou dream, This could be buried? This could be sleep? And love be thrall to death! Nay, whatso seem, Have faith, dear heart; this is the thing that is!” Thereon I woke, and on my lips her kiss.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 37

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 sovereignty, 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
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 38

First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write; And ever since, it grew more clean and white, Slow to world-greetings, quick with its ‘Oh, list,’ When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here, plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss. The second passed in height The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed, Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed! That was the chrism of love, which love’s own crown, With sanctifying sweetness, did procede. The third upon my lips was folded down In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed, I have been proud and said, ‘My love, my own.’

Sara Teasdale
“To L. R. E.”

When first I saw you — felt you take my hand, I could not speak for happiness to find How more than all they said your heart was kind, How strong you were, and quick to understand — I dared not say: “I who am least of those Who call you friend — I love you, and I crave A little love that I may be more brave Because one watches me who cares and knows.” So, silent, long ago I used to look High up along the shelves at one great book, And longed to see its contents, childishwise, And now I know it for my Poet’s own, — So sometime shall I know you and be known, And looking upward, I shall find your eyes.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 39

Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace To look through and behind this mask of me (Against which years have beat thus blanchingly With their rains), and behold my soul’s true face, The dim and weary witness of life’s race, — Because thou has the faith and love to see, Through the same soul’s distracting lethargy, The patient angel waiting for a place In the new Heavens, — because nor sin nor woe, Nor God’s infliction, nor death’s neighborhood, Nor all which others viewing, turn to go, Nor all which makes me tired of all, self-viewed — Nothing repels thee, ... Dearest, teach me so To pour out gratitude, as thou dost, good!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet 43

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 everyday’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with a 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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Love Is Not All”

Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain, Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again. Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. It well may be that in a difficult hour, Pinned down by pain and moaning for release Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, Or trade the memory of this night for food. It may well be. I do not think I would.

Paul A. Clayton
“Reading Sonnets after Loss”

The promises he made now seem so cold. I seek an image of his love in words we shared in our first spring — the morning birds sang with our hearts of love. Now mourning’s old, and tears no longer fall. The autumn’s gold with beauty, loss, and chill breaks me in thirds. Our poet’s songs, like madly driven herds, stir passion, fear and awe — his words still hold. And yet I tremble in my waking breath and flee the darkness formed of death and hell; dried flowers help me seek the birth of Seth in what his words and these shared sonnets tell. I doubt and hope: Is love as strong as death? And oaths of love, do they retrieve as well?