Sonnets from the Portuguese

However, her husband Robert Browning insisted they were the best sequence of English-language sonnets since Shakespeare's time and urged her to publish them.

To offer the couple some privacy, she decided to publish them as if they were translations of foreign sonnets.

let me hear The name I used to run at, when a child, From innocent play, and leave the cowslips piled, To glance up in some face that proved me dear With the look of its eyes.

I miss the clear Fond voices, which, being drawn and reconciled Into the music of Heaven's undefiled, Call me no longer.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and Ideal Grace.