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Barrett Browning's Sonnet 18

I never gave a lock of hair away

Nov 1, 2009 Linda Sue Grimes

The speaker gives a lock of her hair to her belovèd as she dramatizes and philosophizes about the significance of the gift.

In “Sonnet 18” from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, the speaker dramatizes the simple act of giving a lock of her to her lover. She emphasizes the purity of the hair that no other man has touched.

First Quatrain: “I never gave a lock of hair away”

The speaker claims that she has never given any other man a lock of her hair; it seems to be such a special act that she is now conferring on her lover this special lock. She has excised a few strands that extend “to the full brown length.” The strands rest upon her “fingers” as she philosophically dramatizes the event by saying a few words over them.

This speaker is always full of drama, from agonizing over her miseries to proclaiming her now vast love for her belovèd. Her life is the stuff and substance of her poetry, and she lives it in each moment.

Second Quatrain: “Take it. My day of youth went yesterday”

She hands the hair to her lover and commands him, “Take it.” She then reveals that she is no longer young, for “my day of youth went yesterday.” She no longer runs and jumps and skips thus causing her hair to jostle about as she did when she was a child. She no longer performs little rituals with it such as offering it to birds to build their nests.

She needs to justify giving away this lock of hair, just as her personality motivates her to justify everything she does and feels.

First Tercet: “Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears”

In the first tercet of the sestet, she then divulges the use to which she has long put her locks of hair, and it is not surprising that that use would be bound somehow to her sorrow with which has lived her entire life. She does not disappoint as she reveals that the only use for those locks of brown hair is to cover her poor cheeks which are so often streaked with tears.

That locks of hair simply hang down over those tear-stained cheeks and has learned to hide the sorrow that urges those tears. She has become habituated to tilting her head a certain way to encourage the hair to act as a curtain to shield her sadness.

Second Tercet: “Would take this first, but Love is justified”

The speaker’s final dramatic pose reveals that she thought some mortician would be the one to cut her hair. But then her lover came along and “justified” her cutting it herself and presenting it to him.

She discloses that the hair is as pure as the day her mother left “the kiss” on it before she died. She is repeating and emphasizing her claim that no other man has had access to her chaste hair.