Explore "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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."