Browning's Sonnet 32

Have you read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 32 - The first time that the sun rose on thine oath”? It's a poem about guilt and regret over love. Browning's poem talks about how passion can set the course for two people's lives, and commit them to something that, although it should be beautiful, is more likely doomed. While most of the poem seems to show Browning as feeling guilty over having wronged the man she loved because she agreed to marry him even though she knew she wasn't worthy of him, there's a sadness you can see she feels over the ultimate outcome she expects from that love--an outcome that will result from having chosen such an honorable man to love.

Here is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem, "Sonnet 32 - The first time that the sun rose on thine oath," (poem from Poemhunter.com, photo from www.loc.gov):

Sonnet 32 - The first time that the sun rose on thine oath

The first time that the sun rose on thine oath

To love me, I looked forward to the moon

To slacken all those bonds which seemed too soon

And quickly tied to make a lasting troth.

Quick-loving hearts, I thought, may quickly loathe;

And, looking on myself, I seemed not one

For such man's love!—more like an out-of-tune

Worn viol, a good singer would be wroth

To spoil his song with, and which, snatched in haste,

Is laid down at the first ill-sounding note.

I did not wrong myself so, but I placed

A wrong on thee. For perfect strains may float

'Neath master-hands, from instruments defaced,—

And great souls, at one stroke, may do and doat.