Poem by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese. 37. Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make

Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make,
Of all that strong divineness which I know
For thine and thee, an image only so
Formed of the sand, and fit to shift and break.
It is that distant years which did not take
Thy sovranty, recoiling with a blow,
Have forced my swimming brain to undergo
Their doubt and dread, and blindly to forsake
Thy purity of likeness and distort
Thy worthiest love to a worthless counterfeit:
As if a shipwrecked Pagan, safe in port,
His guardian sea-god to commemorate,
Should set a sculptured porpoise, gills a-snort
And vibrant tail, within the temple-gate. 

1. Bianca among the Nightingales
2. Substitution
3. Lord Walter's Wife
4. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 26. I lived with visions for my company
5. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 16. And yet, because thou overcomest so

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