Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Here is a love sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (March 6, 1806 – June 29, 1861), English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologized after her death.
Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English.
If Thou Must Love Me
Sonnet 14
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.