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