The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 16” from Sonnets from the Portuguese dramatizes her nearly complete acceptance of the love from her “noble” suitor.
First Quatrain: “And yet, because thou overcomest so”
The speaker, picking up from prior adversity, can now give in to her belovèd’s advances because he has, at last, been able to overcome her fears and doubts. She again likens him to royalty: “thou art more noble and like a king, / Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling / Thy purple round me, till my heart shall grow.”
Her lover has the kingly powers of protecting even a doubtful heart such as her own. He can place his royal purple cape around her shoulders and affect the very beating of her heart.
Second Quatrain: “Too close against thine heart henceforth to know”
As her heart beats close to his, she finds it difficult to grasp that it once felt so afraid of life and living when it found itself solitary and isolated. She has discovered that she can, in fact, imagine herself lifted from her self-imposed prison of melancholy. She can succumb to upward mobility as readily as she did to the downward spiral, “as in crushing low!”
First Tercet: “And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword”
The speaker then dramatically and bizarrely compares her situation metaphorically to a “soldier” who surrenders in battle as “one who lifts him from the bloody earth.” The enemy becomes nurturing once his foe has been vanquished.
But for her, the battle was very real, and thus the metaphor remains quite apt. Thus she can finally and completely surrender.
Second Tercet: “Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth”
Her handing over of weapons and defensive mechanisms is accompanied by her revelation that “here ends my strife.” True to character, however, she must at least reserve some bit of possible future failure by stating her declaration in a conditional clause, “if thou invite me forth.” She emphasize “thou,” to make it clear that her belovèd is the only one to whom she could ever say these things.
She has quite likely almost one hundred per cent convinced that he has invited her, but she still she has to keep any downturn in her sights. But if he does, in fact, keep that invitation open for her, she will be able to transcend her pain and rise above all the sorrow that has kept her abased for so many years.
Once again, she is giving him a great deal of power as she suggests that as her new attitude will “make thy love larger,” it will also “enlarge my worth.” Thus loving him will increase her own value, not in large part because, in her eyes, his value is as large as a king’s worth. His royalty will become hers.
Other Barrett Browning Articles
 |
