Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
The speaker of sonnet 10 is beginning to reason that despite her flaws, the transformative power of love can change her negative, dismissive attitude.
Introduction and Text of Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet 10 from Sonnets from the Portuguese finds the speaker’s attitude slowly but surely evolving. She is now allowing herself to reason that if God can love his lowliest creatures, surely a man can love a flawed woman. Thus, through that magic power, those flaws may be overcome.
Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee … mark! … I love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.
Reading
Commentary on Sonnet 10 “Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed”
The speaker of sonnet 10 is beginning to reason that despite her flaws, the transformative power of love can change her negative, dismissive attitude. As she begins to turn her negativity around, she puts on a brighter glow of enthusiasm.
First Quatrain: The Value of Love
Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed
And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright,
Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light
Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed:
The speaker begins to focus on the value of love, finding that emotion to be “beautiful” and even “worthy of acceptation.” She likens love to fire and finds love to be “bright” as love is also a flame in the heart and mind. She contends that the power of fire and the light it emits remains the same force regardless of the fuel that feeds it—whether it is “from cedar-plank” or even if it is from “weed.”
Thus, the melancholy speaker is beginning to believe that her suitor’s love can burn as bright even if she is the motivation, although she metaphorically considers herself to be the weed rather than the cedar-plank.
Second Quatrain: Fire and Love
And love is fire. And when I say at need
I love thee … mark! … I love thee—in thy sight
I stand transfigured, glorified aright,
With conscience of the new rays that proceed
The speaker continues the metaphorical comparison of love to fire and boldly states that love is, indeed, fire. She audaciously proclaims her love for her suitor and contends that by saying she loves him, she transforms her lowly self, and thereby she can arise transformed and even reflect an honest kind of glory. The awareness of the vibrations of love that exude from her being causes her to be magnified and made better than she normally believes herself to be.
First Tercet: God’s Love
Out of my face toward thine. There’s nothing low
In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures
Who love God, God accepts while loving so.
The speaker avers that there is nothing about love that is “low.” God loves all of his creatures, even the lowliest. The speaker is evolving toward true acceptance of her suitor’s attention and affection, but she has to convince her doubting mind that there exist sufficiently good reasons for her to change her negative outlook.
Obviously, the speaker has no intention of changing her beliefs in her own low station in life. She carries her past in the heart and mind, and all of her tears and sorrows have permanently tainted her own view of herself. But she can turn toward acceptance and allow herself to be loved, and through that love, she can, at least, bask in its joy as a chilled person would bask in sunshine.
Second Tercet: The Transformative Powers of Love
And what I feel, across the inferior features
Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show
How that great work of Love enhances Nature’s.
The speaker will continue to think of herself as inferior, but because she can now believe that one as illustrious as her suitor can love her, she is opening her heart and mind to the possibility of the transformative powers of love. She still insists on her inferiority, asserting that she possesses “inferior features.”
And she must “feel” her way across such ingrained realities. But she also can now affirm that the power of love is so great that it can enhance the qualities and feature of Nature itself. Such a power demands respect, and the speaker is awakening to that reality.
Linda's Literary Home 