Author: Linda Sue Grimes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again”

The speaker in Barrett Browning’s sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again” is becoming habituated to hearing her belovèd suitor tell her that he loves her.  Thus she acquires the audacity to demand of him that he express to her repeatedly those beautiful, majestic words.

Introduction with Text of Sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s speaker in sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again” from Sonnets from the Portuguese seems to be speaking in an uncharacteristic manner, as she is sounding somewhat giddy. The speaker is encouraging her belovèd to keep on repeating these delicious words that she has so long craved to hear.

She is in a long but steady process of reforming her attitudinal behavior from a timid, unhealthily woman to one of happiness, contentment, and self-assuredness. The speaker is becoming habituated to listening to her suitor say those magic words to her—”I love you.” Thus she is playfully commanding him to continue to  repeat those beautiful words.

Sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again”

Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem “a cuckoo-song,” as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,
Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Belovèd, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain
Cry, “Speak once more—thou lovest!” Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?
Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.

Commentary on Sonnet 21 “Say over again, and yet once over again”

The speaker getting used to hearing to her belovèd suitor tell her that he loves her, and therefore, she begins to playfully demand to hear those magic words repeatedly from the lips of her adored mate.

First Quatrain:  Giddy with Love

Say over again, and yet once over again,
That thou dost love me. Though the word repeated
Should seem “a cuckoo-song,” as thou dost treat it,
Remember, never to the hill or plain,

The speaker playfully and with utmost respect begins to command of her beloved suitor that he continue to repeat to her the words of love that she has so long craved to hear from a companion in a love relationship.  She wants to hear him say he loves her “over again, and yet once over again.”

Although the speaker does admit that the repetition of the same words repeatedly over and over again may likely be thought of as a bit giddy and as vainly repetitious as the cuckoo bird’s outcries, she can justify her orders by insisting that nature itself is full of marvelous examples of repetition that is glorious.

The speaker then brings to mind for her belovèd and also for herself that the breathtaking beautiful season of spring never comes until the meadows and hills have become festooned and spread with the repetitions of the green that the woods and valleys also put on display and still further with the same silly cuckoo’s repetition of plaintive cries.

Second Quatrain:  Human Nature’s Over-Sensitivity

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo-strain
Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed.
Belovèd, I, amid the darkness greeted
By a doubtful spirit-voice, in that doubt’s pain

The speaker is comparing the status of humanity to the machinations of nature in order to clarify and even rehabilitate human nature’s penchant for over-sensitivity.  She in particular wishes to make right her own penchant for being too sensitive.  

The speaker has become transformed by her feeling of delight in hearing her suitor declare his love for her repeatedly.  She is finally acquiring the ability to accept and believe in the truth of  his words. 

The speaker then feels it need to continue expressing herself in her newly acquired giddy state.   She feels justified in engaging in seeming frivolity to demand that her suitor keep on repeating his declarations of affection and love to her. She then abruptly lets him know that during the night her old melancholy and thought of gross negativity had accosted her and caused to return to doubt and sorrow.

Those returning doubts that caused pain have now motivated her to ask him to repeat his words that express his feelings for her.  She yearns to hear those lovely words again and again.  It is for this reason that she is so giddily adamant that he continue to repeat his words of love to her.

Likely, she feels that she must justify her seemingly erratic commands.  Her doubts, thus, remain part of her behavior despite the fact that she seems to have completely accepted as fact that her suitor does love her very much and that he holds her dearly in his heart.

First Tercet:   Too Many Stars or Flowers

Cry, “Speak once more—thou lovest!” Who can fear
Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll,
Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year?

After her confession, the speaker positions an inquiry that further makes her feel more comfortable in repeating her demand to hear those words from the lips of her belovèd.  She insists that people would not likely be against “too many stars”  or even “too many flowers.”  

It is thus that the speaker feels there is no problem with her asking him to repeat his declamation.  She, in fact, wants to hear it repeatedly.  As stars and flowers repeat their presence in the cosmos, her little demand will leave little intrusion.

Second Tercet:  A Bold Request

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me—toll
The silver iterance!—only minding, Dear,
To love me also in silence with thy soul.

The second tercet finds the speaker  dramatizing the repetition as she repeats it herself: “Say thou dost love me, love me, love me.”  The speaker describes the repetition as a “silver iterance,” which asserts its quality as that of a bell.  The speaker has come to strongly desire to hear the “toll” of her lover’s “silver iterance!”

The speaker then offers a startling yet supremely appropriate command.  As much as she loves hearing aloud the words of love, she craves even more that her belovèd, “love me also in silence with thy soul.”  

Without her lover also loving her quietly in his soul, that love would be like a husk of corn with the grain—somewhat protective yet nutritionally useless.  Hearing the words is wonderful, but intuiting the love in the heart and soul is sublime.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away”

In sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away” from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese,” the speaker dramatizes the simple act of giving a lock of her hair to her belovèd.

Introduction with Text of Sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away”

Sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away” from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese reveals the speaker musing on her feelings as she affords her belovèd the gift of a lock of her hair, of which she emphasizes its purity in that no other man has touched it.

The tentative and lonely speaker continues to create little dramas in her developing relationship with her friend and belovèd, who happens to be a fellow poet.  No doubt her lover appreciates her musing and feels a great sense of pride in having her composing for his benefit.

And the poet/speaker herself continues to develop from the shy individual whose countenance had thus far bespoken only melancholy, derived from much physical and mental suffering.

Sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away”

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully,
I ring out to the full brown length and say
‘Take it.’ My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified,—
Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.

Commentary on Sonnet 18  “I never gave a lock of hair away”v

In sonnet 18 “I never gave a lock of hair away,” the speaker is dramatizing a little ritual of the simple act of giving a lock of her hair to her lover.  Such gift giving was a common occurrence in that era, but to this speaker, it becomes a momentous event owing to her years of solitary confinement and physical as well a mental suffering.

First Quatrain:  A Virgin Lock

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully,
I ring out to the full brown length and say

The speaker begins by claiming that she has never given any other man a lock of her hair; it is, therefore, to her a particularly special act that she is now conferring on her lover this special lock. 

She has excised a few strands that extend are the exact full length of her hair which she designates as brown in color, even though she later affirms that she is no longer a young woman.

The strands rest upon her “fingers” as she philosophically dramatizes the event by saying a few words over them.  The object takes on a status of a sacred relic as she seems almost prayerful in handling them.

This speaker is almost always full of drama, from agonizing over her miseries to proclaiming her now vast and growing love and affection for her belovèd. Her life is the stuff and substance of her poetry, and she lives it in each and every moment.

This speaker’s intensity remains the very stuff of living life “deliberately” as promulgated by Barrett Browning’s contemporary, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who affirmed, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.”  This speaker, in nurturing a love relationship with a fellow poet, is living deliberately as she composes verses exploring and celebrating that relationship.

Second Quatrain:  Justifying the Gift

‘Take it.’ My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may

The speaker hands the hair to her lover and commands him, “Take it.” She then reveals the fact that she is no longer a young woman.  She emphasizes that her youth has already passed her by.  She no longer runs and jumps and skips thus causing her hair to jostle about as she did when she was a child. 

The speaker no longer performs little rituals with it such as offering strands of her hair to birds to build their nests.  She needs to justify giving away this lock of hair, just as her personality motivates her to justify everything she does and feels.  Such justification remains part of her notion of living life through deliberate acts.

First Tercet:  Covering Her Poor Cheeks

Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears

In the first tercet of the sestet, the speaker then divulges the use to which she has long put her locks of hair, and it is not surprising that that use would be bound closely to her sorrow with which has lived her entire life. 

The speaker does not disappoint as she reveals that the only use for those locks of brown hair has been to cover her poor cheeks which are so often streaked with tears.  She has shed tears so often and so profusely that she hardly recognizes herself without those streak running down her face.

Those locks of hair have simply hung down over those tear-stained cheeks, and they have learned to hide the sorrow that urges those tears. She has become habituated to tilting her head a certain way to encourage the hair to act as a curtain to shield her sadness.

This speaker’s framing of the rituals with simple strands of falling hair reveals the clever artist whose dramatic verse offers such colorful images that unfold the nature of her cloistered life.  Such drama emphasizes the importance of her new relationship with the important belovèd, who can now help her release the past agony with which she has had to contend.

Second Tercet:  Her Chaste Hair

Would take this first, but Love is justified,—
Take it thou,—finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.

The speaker’s final dramatic pose reveals that she thought some mortician would be the one to cut her hair. This image again emphasizes the morbidity of the thoughts with which the speaker has had to grapple for so many empty years. 

But now her lover has came along and “justified” her cutting it herself and presenting it to him.  Her relief from the past morbid imagery becomes palpable.  She is finally free to accept that happiness may actually become a central feature in the existence.

The speaker then emphasizes again that the hair is as pure as the day her mother left “the kiss” on it before she died.  She is repeating and emphasizing her claim that no other man has had access to her chaste hair.  The purity of this lock of hair becomes symbolic of the purity of the love relationship between the speaker and her belovèd.