How much do I love thee

How much do I love thee?
Of all the worlds matter make nought:
Scrape up the limitless sands of Arabee
Cry nil and cancel ancient debates fought,
Loose the arrow that brings doom to the phoenix.
Find the perfect seventeenth syllable
Confound and master the alchemist’s tricks,
Write down the unsaid of the embalmers table.
Love stills the breath of the living
in a landscape paused between the tick and tock,
Of the measure of time most unforgiving,
And though my tortured head be down before the axeman on the block:

Have no doubt in my most fervent answer dear
I confess it all to you alone and have no slightest fear.

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Published by James Walton

4 thoughts on “How much do I love thee”

  2. What a lovely sonnet to play with James! I did some work on EBB for my Master’s thesis, on the poems chosen over the years in anthologies of womaen’s writing. There’s a book in Monash library which compares Browning (male) with Elizabeth – chapter – I think #7 – called ‘Elizabeth Browning; faults to be expected’. Some of the commets by anthologists were very hard to take (as I recall, all male) – implied that naturally the poets were second rate because female, but someone asked them to do it (or similar). Things like specific poets coming and going out of fashion etc. Interesting. I liked the head on the block – just been reading Hilary Mantell’s latest. Warm regards, Virginia Dr Virginia Lowe Create a Kids’ Book createakidsbook.com.au PO Box 2, Ormond Victoria 3204 ph: 03 9578 5689 mob: 0400 488 100 Stories, Pictures and Reality: Two children tell (Routledge 2007) Lines Between Virginia and John Lowe (Melbourne Poets Union 2018) Description: Description: Lines Between front cover

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  3. I don’t write them very often, very hard to get them remotely right. EBB very under rated, as so many female writers are/were. Of the new writers, Alice Oswald – what a genius she is. Best on earth, I reckon.

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