Marcela Giraldo Leal Literature in English II Group 3 Sonnet 14 By: Elizabeth Barrett Browning ESSAY ON POETRY # 1 LOVE FOR

SAKE, THE REAL LOVE Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes her sonnet 14, an Italian sonnet, composed by fourteen lines with Iambic pentameter. Each foot has an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable that follows the rhyme scheme in two patterns: the first one, the Italian sonnet, contains an octave (eight lines) of two quatrains, rhymed abbaabba, and the second one, followed by a sestet (six lines) rhymed cdcdcd. In each line of the sonnet the enjambment is clearly expressed and also a poetic license is noticed in the line 12 with the last word thereby and the line 14 with the word eternity.

The speaker takes position as a main character of the poetic text that is addressed to her lover with a direct speech in almost all her sonnet, with one

peculiar exception when she refers to herself by using the name a creature in the line 11, and also, an indirect speech can be seen when the poet reproduces her beloveds voice in a speech that she does not want to hear.

The sonnet can be divided in three parts, the first one introduces the main idea about her concept of love, and avoid a fleeting love by rejecting qualities she might lose in a future as her smile, her look or her way of speaking gently. On the contrary, she exalts the only, but not simple, notion of loves sake, and asks to her partner in the most polite way to love her by just one condition: the love itself. That condition can be noticed at the very beginning of the text: If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for loves sake only. In the second part, she avers about the causes why she doesnt want to be loved with transitory feelings and ephemeral perceptions, and his deepest reason is because of the malleability of these sensations, as can be clarified in the next lines:

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee,and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Also, the speaker suggests she should not be loved for pity and then addresses herself as a creature, evoking with that name the sense of pity she does not want to be loved for. Finally, she expresses and reinforces her main intention at the end of the sonnet: But love me for loves sake She also adds two final relevant words: evermore and eternity that realize the profound love immortality conception she has, and presents love as an eternal quality because of its own purpose given by a spiritual inspiration. Therefore, her religious ideas can be discerned amongst the use of endless love, it means, a love after life and after death and over all the earthly feelings that could be dead someday.