In Elizabeth Barret Browning's "Beloved thou hast brought me many flowers," which in your opinion is the most powerful image in this sonnet and why?

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accessteacher | High School Teacher | (Level 3) Distinguished Educator

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Well, in this poem of love and adoration there are many different images that we are provided with, each memorable in its own way, as the speaker in the poem accepts the gift of carefully tended flowers from her beloved and offers him her verse which she cleverly compares to the flowers that she has just received. This extended metaphor that runs through the second half of the sonnet yields some distinctive and memorable imagery that is remarkable in many ways. For me, it is the last two lines of the poem that linger in my mind, where the speaker urges her beloved to maintain her verse in his mind and to realise that her writings reveal her heart and her love for him:

Instruct thine eyes to keep their colours true,

And tell thy soul, their roots are left in mine.

The last line in particular talks about the deep and vibrant connection between the work of a poet and the poetry itself. Here, the speaker implores her lover to see that the "roots" of her verse remain deeply embedded in her soul, and thus the lover can see her work as a genuine outpouring of the emotions that are in her soul.

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