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Sonnets from the Portuguese 5: I lift my heavy heart up solemnly

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806–1861 Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I lift my heavy heart up solemnly,

As once Electra her sepulchral urn,

And, looking in thine eyes, I overturn

The ashes at thy feet. Behold and see

What a great heap of grief lay hid in me,

And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn

Through the ashen greyness. If thy foot in scorn

Could tread them out to darkness utterly,

It might be well perhaps. But if instead

Thou wait beside me for the wind to blow

The grey dust up,... those laurels on thine head,

O My beloved, will not shield thee so,

That none of all the fires shall scorch and shred

The hair beneath. Stand further off then! Go.

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Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806–1861

POET’S REGION England

SCHOOL / PERIOD Victorian

Subjects Love, Romantic Love, Break-ups & Vexed Love, Heartache & Loss

More about this poem

Elizabeth Barrett Browning began writing as a young girl in Durham, England. Despite a nervous collapse, a period of grief occasioned by the untimely deaths of two brothers, and a lifetime of illness, she continued to write poetry and essays about politics and social injustices, eventually becoming one of the greatest writers of the Victorian Era. In 1846 she eloped to Florence, Italy, with Robert Browning, to whom she dedicated . . .

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