Communication of the words of love would mean nothing if the depth of love did not exist in silence, in the soul. It is only through this reflection on the readers’ part that the complemental emerges from the opposing: in the whole that is the sonnet, silence and speech are dependent upon each other as concepts.

Reason (functioning as a verb) fills the gap between the two seemingly contrasting concepts of speech and silence: upon first glance, the request for articulation and simultaneous silence seems deeply incompatible, forcing the reader to back to the first poem to re examine the inconsistency.

The rhythm of the sonnet slows, calmed by the endearment, “dear” in the middle of the sentence and further checked by “also” in line 14. The second poem accesses the complimentary opposite of the first: silence as opposed to speech and, on a lesser level, the soul as opposed to the body and earth. To love me also in silence with thy soul (13-4). Say thou dost love me, love me, love me-tollįollowed, on the same line, by the Volta and the second poem of the text, its only appearance:

The register of passion and restatement comes to its crescendo in: Terms and phrases are recurrent: “over again” and “once over again” in line 1, “Too many… though” occurs both in line 10 and 11, variations of speech (“Speak”, “cry”, “Say”) are dotted through out the poem. The poem, then, calls for communication and repeated expression, with its punctuation and vocabulary reflecting this content. Sonnet 21 creates an argument for the use of repeated speech in love, viewing the repetition of the words, “I love you” as unable to lose their force and power. The term ‘complementary opposite’ implies two seemingly conflicting concepts that are two necessary sides of the same system. The double poem arises, then, by accessing the complementary opposite of what the sonnet sets up. Within the poem, however, the register does not fluctuate. “Sonnets from the Portuguese” do not shift from a poem of distance to a poem of intimacy: they all remain, rather, within the same register of emotion, though that register might be more passionate in one sonnet than another (sonnet 21, for example, has more ardent tone, centered on enunciation and evocation, then sonnet 32, which is a more level narration).

In Elizabeth Browning, this dialogue of the poem with itself exists on a much subtler level than it does in Arnold.

Sonnets from the portuguese 22