614. Sonnets from the Portuguese XXXVII

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861)

  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.