11 Nov: Sonnet II "But only three in all God's universe..." by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
But only three in all God's universe
Have heard this word thou hast said,---Himself, beside
Thee speaking, and me listening! and replied
One of us . . . that was God, . . . and laid the curse
So darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce
My sight from seeing thee,---that if I had died,
The deathweights, placed there, would have signified
Less absolute exclusion. 'Nay' is worse
From God than from all others, O my friend!
Men could not part us with their worldly jars,
Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend;
Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars:
And, heaven being rolled between us at the end,
We should but vow the faster for the stars.
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This seems to be a direct continuation of Sonnet 1. How (using the other reviewer's ideas here), she had expected to live in isolation and die an early death from her ailments as a young woman, but here, Love, Robert Browning, is speaking another tune! Her use of God here "and laid the curse so darkly on my eyelids, as to amerce my sight from seeing thee"...is interesting. It's hard to tell if she blames this Father figure for her ailments, but does not also praise him for her meeting Robert.
ReplyDeleteNone of nature could "change us"...
The last two lines, I don't understand. When death/heaven does come...then they should vow/promise that the stars should come between them first?
There is a lot of negative connotations. But the end sounds like they have a place in heaven. Which is why the narrator would bring on a faster death.
DeleteA heaven above versus a heaven on earth. I have a feeling she foreshadows the changing of her mind in later sonnets...and wishes death to substain for a while longer.
DeleteA little Emily Dickinson...poems of contradicting thoughts as she grows, and learns more...and CS Lewis denying and accepting Christianity. Totally real approach.