#elizabethbrowning

[victorianchap]

🔸 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, famous English poet and early feminist pictured with her son, Robert Barrett Browning, 1860. #victorianchap #goodolddays #elizabethbrowning #vintage #poet #feminist #victorian #oldphoto #portrait #retro #nostalgia #1860s #history https://www.instagram.com/p/B7nhO-1A-sR/?igshid=n6eus19o3f6y

[thepoetryapp]

Of English blood, of Tuscan birth, What country should we give her? Instead of any on the earth, The civic Heavens receive her. from "A Child's Grave at Florence" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning https://www.texts.at/o5x

[clearruinsbarbarian]

DOUBTS

If the bridge keep falling

Would you still stood by my side?

If the bridge keep falling

Would you be there to catch me?

 When the people I loved left me

Would you still be here, smiling at me?

When the people I loved left me

Would your heart still beats for me?

 If all my dreams keep crashing

Would you still lingered next to me?

If all my dreams keep crashing

Would you be the one I am dreaming of?

[hitchedinparadise-blog]

Love makes the ride worthwhile! #elizabethbrowning

[victorianeracourtship]

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say 'I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'— For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,— A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent English poets of the Victorian era. Some of her popular works are the forty-four individual poems in the Sonnets from the Portuguese; however, she did not gave titles to these individual poems. And, the first phrase of the first line of the sonnets served as a kind of title. One of her sonnets is Sonnet 14, "If thou must love me".

The sonnet begins with the writer addressing her lover. She says that if he should love her, he should love her for the sake of love only and not for other reasons. She used the word 'only' to emphasize her utmost feeling to this - to express her desperation. She also says that he should not love her for her smiles or her beauty or her way of speaking or even her way of thinking; for these all can be changed or be changed for him. She adds that he also must not love her out of pity for her tears because tears may dry and comfort may not be needed and with these his love may wither. She then says that he should love her for "love's sake" only. Love her because of love and because of the eternal quality of love on earth.

The qualities that the speaker mentioned in the poem are the usual physical qualities that a man fall in love with. More often than not, we mistake our love for beauty as Love but as the speaker said these beauty can vanish or be changed. In the Victorian Era, courtship and marriages are made out of practicalities and someone like Elizabeth Browning might be romantic enough to bulk about these practicalities. Why can’t we love just for the sake of love only?  

The idea of loving for ‘love’s sake only’  somewhat comes out as circular but the poem as a whole conveys a deep sense of fear of loss. It is said that Elizabeth Browning married a very dashing but footloose Robert Browning. This marriage resulted to her father disowning her. With no inheritance and a lifelong illness, she fears that Robert Browning’s love for her would fade as her earthly possessions vanish.

Sources: 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sonnet-14-if-thou-must-love-me-let-it-be-for-nou/