Sonnets from the Portuguese, 1

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Teacher card

Published: 1850, in Sonnets from the Portuguese
Length: 14 lines, 119 words, 1 word in 24 is long
Year band: Reading load: Years 3–4. A guide from word length, not a curriculum level.
Themes: love
Time: 5–10 min, depending on the activity

The text

I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young:And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightway I was ’ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,—“Guess now who holds thee!”—“Death,” I said, But, there,The silver answer rang, “Not Death, but Love.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (died 1861), Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), lines 112–125 of Project Gutenberg ebook #2002. Public domain in Australia: the author died before 1955. Copied word for word and checked against the ebook.

What to do with it

One link and one task line for each activity. Send a student the one you want them to do, or print this page and hand it round; each link has a QR code.

Its lines are dealt for names in posy cardsin posy · 14 lines · about 5–10 min
Task for students (you can change the sentence before you print; nothing is saved)See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
See how posy takes lines from this poem, then make a card for someone using them.
posy.popplepoetry.com/sources#bb-1

Send the whole hand-out

This page’s link. Students open it, read the text and pick what to do; nothing asks them to sign in.

Link for the whole text

https://popplepoetry.com/find/browning-sonnets-from-the-portuguese-1 · popplepoetry.com