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