Barrett Browning's Sonnet 21

Say over again, and yet once over again

Nov 13, 2009 Linda Sue Grimes

The speaker is growing accustomed to hearing her lover say, "I love you,"-so much so that she is now commanding him to repeat it again and again.

The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 21” from Sonnets from the Portuguese is behaving rather giddily, imploring her belovèd to keep repeating that he loves her. She is transforming from the timid, little doubter to a rather self-assured woman.

First Quatrain: “Say over again, and yet once over again”

The speaker commands her lover to tell her “over again, and yet once over again / That thou dost love me.” Yet she admits that repeating the same phrase over and over might sound silly and repetitive as the cuckoo bird’s call. But then she avers that nature is full of beloved repetition.

She reminds her lover and herself that spring never comes without the hills and plains being greeted with the same greens as the valley and wood that resound with the crazy cuckoo’s repetition.

Second Quatrain: “Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain”

The speaker likens the human world to the world of nature to justify or correct human nature’s sometimes fastidiousness, or, at least, her own. She simply has grown in delight, hearing her lover tell her he loves her, and she has finally accepted it as truth. She thus cannot stop her giddiness as she commands him to repeat the love declaration.

But she then apprizes him that during the night, her old demons caused her again to begin to doubt, and “in that doubt’s pain,” she felt compelled to command him to speak those words of love to her once more. Thus, she emphatically calls, “Speak once more--thou lovest!”

First Tercet: “Cry, Speak once more--thou lovest! Who can fear”

The speaker, after this confession, asks a question that also allows her to feel justified in her command. Through the question, she is emphasizing that no one would fear “too many stars” nor “too many flowers”; therefore, she insists that there is nothing to fear from repeating the love declaration so she may hear it again and again. As the stars must “roll” “in heaven” and the flowers must “crown the year,” hearing her belovèd repeat his love for her is even less intrusion on the cosmos.

Second Tercet: “Say thou dost love me, love me, love me--toll”

In the final tercet, she dramatizes the repetition by repeating it herself: “Say thou dost love me, love me, love me,” and she calls the repetition a “silver iterance,” suggesting that it has the quality of a bell sound; she craves hearing the “toll” of the “silver iterance!”

But she offers an addition to the command for the audible reiteration of the love proclamation; she also commands her lover “To love me also in silence with thy soul.” She knows that her final command is even more vital than hearing the words, for words without soul force are like husks without grain.

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning