Browning went on to be recognized as one of the foremost poets of early Victorian England, influencing such writers as Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. She began writing poems at a young age, finding success with the 1844 publication of Poems. Her marriage to the prominent Victorian poet Robert Browning caused the final break between Browning and her family, after which she moved to Italy and lived there with Robert for the rest of her life. The daughter of a wealthy family-her father made his fortune as a slave owner in Jamaica, while her mother’s family owned and operated sugar plantations, mills, and ships-Browning eventually became an abolitionist and advocate for child labor laws. Though unseen, they are the key to the plant being nourished and continuing to grow.Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was an English poet.
It makes me think of those deep connections that last beyond the petals themselves, the strength of them. Do you think that love can survive these trials? Like the ivy and eglantine that flourish in the harshest conditions? Or do we need the flowers and their colour to help it endure? The word ‘roots’ in the final line is interesting too. The plea to ‘take them…keep them…keep their colours true’ could suggest that there is hope for this love despite the weeds that have grown up. What has happened to make this change? The word ‘wait’ jumps out at me, ‘wait thy weeding’ where is this Beloved and why is she left waiting? ‘Take them, as I used to do Thy flowers’ also makes me wonder how much time has elapsed since these flowers have been given? Has there been a change of heart? Or perhaps just an enforced separation for a time?
This feels vulnerable somehow.Īnd yet now another change, for it seems that the heart’s ground is now ‘overgrown with bitter weeds and rue’. I’m interested in the ‘heart’s ground’ and what it takes to release these kinds of thoughts from its safe soil.
It seems these thoughts have grown slowly over time. I love the word ‘unfolded’ here and that image of the flower opening very gradually. Like the flowers in the way they ‘unfolded…on warm and cold days’ here she shares something more personal, her ‘thoughts’, pulled up from her ‘heart’s ground’. Now it is the writer’s turn to give something to the one she calls ‘Beloved’. Although it seems there is a change or a shift as we hit line 6, with the phrase ‘take back’. Maybe the fact that flowers can grow in the room makes it feel like a garden to her. I’m struck immediately by the setting of the poem ‘In this close room’ and wonder why it is that the writer is here rather than out in the garden enjoying the flowers in their natural habitat? The flowers themselves seem not to miss the ‘sun and showers’, but I can’t tell if the writer feels the same.
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