Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think”

Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think” from Sonnets from the Portuguese finds the speaker in a pensive mood, dramatizing her awe at the difference a year has made in her life.

Introduction with Text of Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think”

The speaker in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think” from Sonnets from the Portuguese remembers that just year ago she would not have been able to imagine that a love relationship with someone so important as her belovèd would break the chains of sorrow with which she has been bound for many years.

This sonnet finds the speaker in a pensive mood, dramatizing her awe at the difference a year has made in her life.  The speaker is gaining confidence in her ability to attract and return the kind of love that she has yearned for but heretofore considered herself unworthy of possessing. 

Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think”

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sate alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink
No moment at thy voice … but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains, as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand … why, thus I drink
Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull
Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

Commentary on Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think”

Sonnet 20 “Beloved, my Beloved, when I think” finds the speaker in a pensive mood, dramatizing her awe at the difference a year has made in her life.

First Quatrain:  The Difference a Year Makes

Beloved, my Beloved, when I think
That thou wast in the world a year ago,
What time I sate alone here in the snow
And saw no footprint, heard the silence sink 

The speaker is reminiscing about her feelings “a year ago” before she had met her belovèd. She sat watching the snow that remained without his “footprint.” The silence surrounding her lingered without her hearing his voice. The speaker is structuring her remarks in when/then clauses; she will be saying, “when” this was true, “then” something else was true.

In the first quatrain, she is thus beginning her clause with “when I think” and what she is thinking about is the time before her belovèd and she had met. She continues the “when” clause until the last line of the second quatrain.

Second Quatrain:  Never to be Broken Chains

No moment at thy voice … but, link by link,
Went counting all my chains, as if that so
They never could fall off at any blow
Struck by thy possible hand … why, thus I drink 

Continuing to recount what she did and how she felt before her ne love came into her life, she reminds her audience that she was bound by “all my chains” which she “went counting” and believing would never be broken.  The speaker makes it clear that her belovèd has, in fact, been responsible for breaking those chains of pain and sorrow that kept her bound and weeping.

The speaker then moves into the “then” construction, averring that the arrival of her belovèd is, indeed, the reason that she can now look on the world as a place “of wonder.”  At this point, she is simply experiencing the awe of wonder that she should be so fortunate to have her belovèd strike those metaphorical blows against the chains of sorrow that kept her in misery.

First Tercet:  Near Incredulous

Of life’s great cup of wonder! Wonderful,
Never to feel thee thrill the day or night
With personal act or speech,—nor ever cull 

The speaker then expounds on what she had not been able to foretell as she remained unable to experience the joy and thrill of living that her belovèd has now afforded her through his acts of kindness and his verbal expressions of affection.  The speaker is nearly incredulous that she could have remained without the love that has become so important to her.

Second Tercet:  Dull as Atheists

Some prescience of thee with the blossoms white
Thou sawest growing! Atheists are as dull,
Who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.

The speaker adds another part of her astonishing “wonder”: that she was not able to sense that such a being might actually be living and amenable to having a relationship with her.  She feels that she should have had some inkling of awareness that such might be the case.

She sees now that she was “as dull” as “atheists,” those unimaginative souls, “who cannot guess God’s presence out of sight.”   The speaker’s belovèd is such a marvelous work of nature that she imbues him with a certain divine stature, and she considers herself somewhat “dull” for not being about to guess that such a one existed. 

As atheists are unable to surmise of Supreme Intelligence guiding the ordered cosmos, she was incapable of imagining that one such as her belovèd would come along and free her from her self-induced coma of sadness.