First Quatrain: “What can I give thee back, O liberal”
The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 8” from Sonnets from the Portuguese once again finds herself baffled with the attention she receives from one who is so much above her station in life. He has given her so much, being a “liberal / And princely giver.” He has brought his valuable poetry to her along with his own upper-class qualities and manners. She metaphorically assigns all of those gifts to the status of “gold and purple,” the colors of royalty, and locates them “outside the wall.”
The suitor romances her by serenading under her window, and she is astonished by the good fortune she is experiencing. She cannot comprehend how one so delicate and lowly positioned as herself can merit the attention she continues to garner from this handsome, accomplished poet.
Second Quatrain: “For such as I to take or leave withal”
The handsome suitor provides the speaker with the choice of taking his affections and attentions or rejecting them, and she is very grateful for all she receives even as she regrets that she has nothing to offer in return: “I render nothing back at all.” She frames her lack into a question that answers itself, implying that even though she may seem “ungrateful,” nothing could be further from the truth.
The rhetorical heft gained by framing her feelings in a rhetorical question enriches not only the artistry of the sonnet but also adds intensity to the feelings themselves. The emotion is magnified by the question format. Instead of adding intensifiers such as “of course” or “definitely,” her rhetorical question combines those tools into a dramatic concentration of explosive sentiment.
First Tercet: “Not so; not cold, --- but very poor instead”
The speaker, however, does not leave the question open to possible misinterpretation; she then quite starkly answers, “No so; not cold.” She does not lack passion about the gifts her suitor bestows upon her; she is merely “very poor instead.”
She insists that it is “God who knows” the extent of her poverty as well as the depth of her gratitude. She then admits that through much shedding of tears, she has caused the details of her life to fade as clothing rinsed many times in water would become “pale a stuff.”
Second Tercet: “And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done”
The speaker’s lack of a colorful life, her lowly station, her simplicity of expression have all combined to make her denigrate herself before the higher class suitor with whom she feels compelled to contrast herself.
She is still not able to reconcile her lack to his plenty, and again she wants to urge him to go from her, because she feels her lack is worth so little that it might “serve to trample on.” Her hopes and dreams she will keep hidden until they can override the reality of her personal lack of experience and life station.
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