Love Notes

Ok I am a chick, a hopeless romantic kind of chick. So when I read a lot from Elizabeth Browning, it reminds me of most women. Women lookin for love and express it in different ways. Her Sonnets from the Portuguese express all the different types of love, and the various ways she responded to her relationship with her husband. Sonnet 1 is the reaction to the new found relationship between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. During the early moments love was like a song, like that of old Greek poetry. She expresses her love by a "how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-- "Guess now who holds thee?"--"Death," I said, But, there, The silver answer rang,--"Not Death, but Love." She seemed to fear the feeling that was coming over her, and thought that it was death coming to control her when in fact it was love that mastered her. This suggests to me that this was her first love, a love that was never felt before. A new emotion of control on her that she couldn't explain but in terms she understood, Death being the ultimate master.