Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make,
Of all that strong divineness which I know
For thine and thee, an image only so
Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.
It is that distant years which did not take
Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,
Have forced my swimming brain to undergo
Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake
Thy purity of likeness and distort
Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit:
As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to commemorate,
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate.
(C) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
03/24/2017
Best Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Xxx
- Sonnet 24 - Let The Worlds Sharpness, Like A Clasping Knife
- Sonnet 21 - Say Over Again, And Yet Once Over Again
- Sonnet 06 - Go From Me. Yet I Feel That I Shall Stand
- Sonnet 26 - I Lived With Visions For My Company
- The Cry Of The Children
- A Musical Instrument
- The Best Thing In The World
- Sonnet 10 - Yet, Love, Mere Love, Is Beautiful Indeed
- Sonnet 42 - my Future Will Not Copy Fair My Past
- Sonnet Ii
- Sonnet 27 - My Own Beloved, Who Hast Lifted Me
- Sonnet 35 - If I Leave All For Thee, Wilt Thou Exchange
- Bianca Among The Nightingales
- Grief
- Sonnet 36 - When We Met First And Loved, I Did Not Build
- Sonnet 25 - A Heavy Heart, Beloved, Have I Borne
- Sonnet 03 - Unlike Are We, Unlike, O Princely Heart!
- Sonnet 11 - And Therefore If To Love Can Be Desert
- Sonnet 09 - Can It Be Right To Give What I Can Give?
- Sonnet 18 - I Never Gave A Lock Of Hair Away