![]() ![]() It could be that this is simply the poet's private conversation with herself. We open in medias res – in the middle of a conversation, in fact. Tightly structured, but simple enough to be memorable (few sonnets by any poet are so quickly memorised, the first few lines, at least), gradually spreading itself across space and time, Sonnet 43 nevertheless has a brilliantly unassuming beginning. "I love thee" the poem repeats, and the mood of that quiet, confident statement is reflected technically. This poem also touches on the early sorrows, but only to pass lightly over them. Not surprisingly, Elizabeth's joy in her late-found happiness is mixed with reminders of early hardships, and the notional rejection the form seems to demand produces some heavily mournful Victorian postures in many of the sonnets. It is less tortuously self-analytical than many others in the sequence. The anthologists aren't always right in their tendency to single out certain poems at the expense of others by the same author, but the endless popularity of Sonnet 43 is understandable. ![]()
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