Sonnet 29 – ‘I think of thee!’
What it's about
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is spoken by a woman who thinks about her lover constantly when he is away. But her thoughts are no substitute for him: she wants him there in person.
It comes from Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), written during her secret courtship with the poet Robert Browning. Her strict father forbade his children to marry, so the couple married in secret in 1846 and left for Italy.
Key terms
Form and structure
It is a : fourteen lines, an of eight and a of six, the traditional form of a love poem.
The poem is full of and dashes, as if her thoughts overflow the strict form. The turn, or , comes as she demands that he come back: ‘Renew thy presence’.
It ends with a paradox: ‘I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.’ When he is with her, she no longer needs to think of him.
Key terms
Language
An runs through the poem. Her thoughts ‘twine and bud / About thee, as wild vines, about a tree’: they grow so thick that they hide him.
She calls him ‘O my palm-tree’, a strong, tall, exotic tree, perhaps a symbol of his strength and of male desire. She wants him to ‘Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare’, sweeping away her thoughts.
The violent verbs in ‘burst, shattered, everywhere!’ show the force of her passion, unusual for a respectable Victorian woman to express.
Key terms
Themes and comparisons
romantic love and desire; absence and longing; nature.
- Love's Philosophy: another poem of desire built on nature, from a man's point of view.
- Letters from Yorkshire: love kept alive across distance.
- Winter Swans: a couple drawn back together, with nature as a symbol.
Remember
Link the overflowing enjambment to the strength of her feelings, and the sonnet to the tradition of love poetry.