In a moment of raw self-doubt, the speaker questions whether she has any right to offer her love. She sees her gift as a paltry thing—full of tears, weary sighs, and infrequent smiles that can’t sustain themselves, no matter how much her beloved urges her to be happy. The imbalance between them gnaws at her: “We are not peers, / So to be lovers.” She feels that by giving such a sorrowful, limited love, she would only be ungenerous, contaminating his bright world with her own darkness. Her love, she thinks, would be like dust on his royal purple, like a poisonous breath on delicate Venetian glass. Yet after all these protests, she undercuts her own argument with a simple, moving confession: “Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.” The poem swerves from anxious self-criticism into a tender, almost pleading acceptance—she loves him, and that must be enough.
Sonnet 09 - Can it be right to give what I can give? — Summary
Can it be right to give what I can give? To let thee sit beneath the fall of tears As salt as mine, and hear the sighing years Re-sighing on my lips renunciative Through those infrequent smiles which fail to live For all thy adjurations? O my fears, That this can scarce be right! We are not peers, So to be lovers; and I own, and grieve, That givers of such gifts as mine are, must Be counted with the ungenerous. Out, alas! I will not soil thy purple with my dust, Nor breathe my poison on thy Venice-glass, Nor give thee any love—which were unjust. Beloved, I only love thee! let it pass.