Explore "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear / Too calm and sad a face in front of thine; / For we two look two ways, and cannot shine / With the same sunlight on our brow and hair.
On me thou lookest with no doubting care, / As on a bee shut in a crystalline; / Since sorrow hath shut me safe in love's divine, / And to spread wing and fly in the outer air / Were most impossible failure, if I strove / To fail so. But I look on thee-on thee- / Beholding, besides love, the end of love, / Hearing oblivion beyond memory; / As one who sits and gazes from above, / Over the rivers to the bitter sea.