This evening, I ended up at my favourite, quaint bookstore ~ Books, Inc. ~ to warm up with a cup of chai. While waiting for it, I asked if they had anything by or about Leonard Cohen [looking out for a friend]. We went to the aisle where they would have been, had any been there. I glanced at what was, and was drawn to the thin, small book with older binding and nothing printed on its binding. It turned out to be "Sonnets from the Portuguese" by Browning.
WELL, after hearing here about the passionate poet of Portugal, I was certainly interested in this! The outside cover is very interesting, almost like a light wallpaper or heavy wrapping paper ~ in bold red, black, silvery-blue, silver, and gold dots, and an almost yin-yang design, within broken circles, and superimposed over squares of black and red. Old paper, no publishing date, but publisher is Grosset & Dunap /
New York. So, how can Elizabeth Barrett Browning be writing Sonnets
from the
Portuguese!?! No introduction, preface, or foreword....no hints, no clues, no explanations, just the poems. A signed, "Happy Birthday" gift on "February 18, 1938" from "Lingo." For $2.99, sure seemed an appropriate-enough book to read with my warming chai. The first poem convinced me I should buy it. All that said, I'll share it with you, as it seems somehow appropos for this thread. None of the poems are named, just numbered. Not being poetry-savvy, I'll research for the why's and wherefore's of this 'small' collection's title.
I
I thought once how Theocritus had sung
Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,
Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young:
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
Tyhe sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, ~
"Guess now who holds thee?" ~
"Death," I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang, ~ "Not Death, but Love."
I can see a passion in this first offering.....Love doesn't just call you by your name; it also seems to draw you backward by the hair
. Is this historical evidence that it
also says, "Come lie beside me, baby. That's an order"
?
What a wonderful night this has been......this, only a part.
~ Lizzy
. Your poem effectively describes the situation, Greta, as with him, I remain vulnerable.