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