{
 "id": "elizabeth-barrett-browning/xxviii",
 "title": "XXVIII",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Elizabeth Barrett Browning",
 "poet_slug": "elizabeth-barrett-browning",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Sonnets from the Portuguese",
 "book_slug": "sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 28,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1850,
  "venue": "Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://github.com/standardebooks/elizabeth-barrett-browning_sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2002"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/elizabeth-barrett-browning_sonnets-from-the-portuguese",
  "file": "sonnets-from-the-portuguese.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2002",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100114123"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 14,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 49,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And yet they seem alive and quivering",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Against my tremulous hands which loose the string",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And let them drop down on my knee tonight.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This said, he wished to have me in his sight",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Once, as a friend; this fixed a day in spring",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To come and touch my hand⁠—a simple thing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Yet I wept for it!⁠—this⁠—the paper’s light⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "As if God’s future thundered on my past.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "This said I am thine⁠—and so its ink has paled",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With lying at my heart that beat too fast;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And this⁠—O Love, thy words have ill availed,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If what this said I dared repeat at last!",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}