Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 9:  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 9:  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

Continuing her lamentations over the gap in societal station between her suitor and herself, the speaker wonders if she has anything to offer the suitor. But after exaggerating that distance, she attempts to close it up by emphasizing just how much she does love him.

Introduction and Text of Sonnet 9:  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

Sonnet 9, from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, seems to offer the speaker’s strongest rebuttal against the pairing of herself and her beloved.   She seems most adamant that he leave her; yet in her inflexible demeanor screams the opposite of what she seems to be urging upon her lover.

Her dramatic reversal offers the strongest expression of the intensity of the love she actually feels for her beloved suitor.  Despite having nearly dismissed him, she, in fact, lets him know how utterly and desperately she wants him to stay.

Sonnet 9:  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative
Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,
That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,
Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love—which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.  

Reading  

Commentary on Sonnet 9:  “Can it be right to give what I can give?”

As she continues to bemoan the gap between the social stations of her suitor and herself, the speaker wonders if she has anything to offer her belovèd.

First Quatrain:  Only Sorrow to Offer

Can it be right to give what I can give?
To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears
As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years
Re-sighing on my lips renunciative

In Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ninth sonnet of the sequence, the speaker begins with a question, asking if it even appropriate for her consider giving her beloved the paltry gifts that she possesses.

She then explains what she has to offer; through a bit of exaggeration, she contends that all she has to offer is her sorrow. If her suitor continues with her, he will have to suffer watching her continue to cry and moan. 

And he will have to listen to her sighs again and again. Her “lips” are like a renunciant, who has given up all desire for worldly gain and material achievement; thus, she deems herself unworthy of one so accomplished in worldly matters as her suitor is.

Second Quatrain:  Seldom Smiling Lips

Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live
For all thy adjurations? O my fears,
That this can scarce be right! We are not peers,
So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve,

The speaker’s lips have seldom smiled, and they even now seem incapable of acquiring the smiling habit, despite the attentions she is now receiving from her suitor.  She is afraid that such an unbalanced situation is unfair to her lover; thus she laments the likelihood that pairing with him could be appropriate. Continuing she exclaims that they are no “peers.”  

She allows her disdain of her lowly station compared to his to dominate her concerns and her rhetoric.  Because they are “not peers,” she cannot fathom how they can be lovers, yet it seems that such is the nature of their maturing relationship.  She feels that she must confess that the gap between them continues to taunt her and to cause her to “grieve.”

First Tercet:  Copious Tears

That givers of such gifts as mine are, must
Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas!
I will not soil thy purple with my dust,

The speaker spells out her concern that by giving him such gifts as copious tears and unsmiling lips she has to be reckoned as an individual lacking in generosity. She wishes it were otherwise; she would like to give gifts as rich as the ones she receives.

But because she is incapable of returning equal treasure, she again insists that her lover leave her; she cries out demanding he turn away from her. Again, elevating her lover to the status of royalty, she insists that she does not wish to tarnish his royalty with her lowly, common status.

Second Tercet:  Self-Argument

Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass,
Nor give thee any love—which were unjust.
Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.

She likens her station in life to a poisonous atmosphere, with which she does not want to mar his higher class status  She will not allow her lowly station to sully his higher class.  But then she goes much too far, saying, “[n]or give thee any love.” She immediately reverses herself, averring that she was wrong in making such a statement. Thus, she asserts, “Belovèd, I only love thee! let it pass.” 

She finally admits without reservation that she loves him and asks him to forget the protestations she has made.  She asks him to “let it pass,” or forget that she has made such suggestions that he should leave her; she wants nothing more than that he stay.

By earlier protesting so vehemently that they are not a suitable pair and then reversing herself so completely so quickly, she has created a fascinating little drama that expresses her love while laying special emphasis on the that love’s intensity.