The Complete Guide to Sonnet 29 – 'I think of thee!'

A first look at the poem

Sonnet 29 is one of the forty-four poems in Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a sequence published in 1850. The sequence was written during her courtship with the poet Robert Browning, whom she married in 1846. It is a sequence of love poems spoken by a woman to the man she loves.

In this sonnet, the speaker begins with an exclamation: she thinks of her beloved. But her thoughts grow around him like wild vines around a tree, putting out leaves until he is hidden. She does not want thoughts instead of him. She commands him to be present, to shake off the vines, to let them fall and shatter. The poem ends in a paradox: in the joy of seeing and hearing him, she does not think of him, because she is too near.

The poem is in the Love and Relationships cluster on AQA GCSE English Literature (8702). It pairs well with poems about longing, presence, nature and power in love.

What just happened

• A woman's thoughts of her beloved grow like vines and hide him.
• She commands him to be present instead.
• She ends too near to think of him.

Why it matters. The poem is about the difference between imagining someone and being with them.

What to remember

• Published 1850 in Sonnets from the Portuguese.
• Spoken by a woman to a man.

What a sonnet is, and why it matters here

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem with a fixed rhyme scheme. This one is a Petrarchan sonnet, named after the Italian poet Petrarch. It divides into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The octave usually sets out a problem or situation; there is a turn, called the volta; and the sestet responds or resolves.

For centuries the sonnet was the form for love poetry, and it had a typical shape: a man speaks of his longing for a woman who is distant, idealised and silent. The woman is admired from afar and rarely answers.

Barrett Browning takes over this form. Her speaker is a woman; the beloved is a man; and the woman, not the man, speaks and commands. The sonnet's tradition of distance is also overturned: instead of ending in hopeless longing, this sonnet ends with the speaker ‘too near’ to her beloved to think of him. Knowing the tradition lets you see how much the poem changes.

What just happened

• Fourteen lines: octave, turn, sestet.
• Traditionally a man's form for addressing a distant woman.
• Here a woman speaks, and ends in closeness.

Why it matters. The form is part of the meaning: the poem rewrites a tradition.

What to remember

• Petrarchan: problem, turn, resolution.
• The voice is reversed.

The octave: thoughts that hide

‘I think of thee!—my thoughts do twine and bud / About thee, as wild vines, about a tree’. The poem's first words are an exclamation of love. Then the dash leads straight into a metaphor. Her thoughts are wild vines; he is a tree. ‘Twine’ means to wind closely round something. ‘Bud’ means to sprout new growth. Her thoughts are multiplying and wrapping round him.

‘Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see / Except the straggling green which hides the wood.’ The thoughts grow broad leaves until there is ‘nought’ — nothing — to see but untidy greenery. ‘Straggling’ means growing in a messy, spreading way. The tree, the real man, is hidden by them. This is the problem the poem sets out: loving thoughts have become so many that they conceal the person they are about.

‘Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood / I will not have my thoughts instead of thee / Who art dearer, better!’ The speaker turns to address him directly as her palm-tree and states firmly that she will not accept thoughts as a substitute. He is dearer and better than any image of him. The octave ends on a command: ‘Rather, instantly / Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should’.

What just happened

• Her thoughts twine round him like wild vines.
• They grow until they hide him.
• She refuses thoughts instead of him and commands his presence.

Why it matters. The octave sets out the problem and begins the response.

What to remember

• ‘twine and bud’: growth and multiplication.
• ‘I will not have my thoughts instead of thee’: the key decision.

The sestet: shattering the vines

‘Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, / And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee, / Drop heavily down,—burst, shattered everywhere!’ The speaker imagines the tree shaking itself free. The boughs rustle; the trunk is made bare; the bands of greenery that ‘insphere’ — enclose all round — the tree fall heavily and burst.

The verbs have changed. In the octave the vines twined, budded and put out leaves: verbs of growth. Now they drop, burst and shatter: verbs of destruction. The speaker has turned against her own thoughts and wants them violently removed. The exclamation mark shows the force of her feeling.

‘Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee / And breathe within thy shadow a new air, / I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.’ Now she explains why. Being with him — seeing, hearing, breathing near him — is a deep joy. In his shadow, the air is new. And in that closeness, she does not think of him. She is too near to need to.

What just happened

• The tree shakes off the vines, which fall and shatter.
• Verbs of growth become verbs of destruction.
• Presence brings a joy deeper than thought.

Why it matters. The sestet completes the command and resolves the problem.

What to remember

• ‘burst, shattered everywhere!’: violent desire.
• ‘too near thee’: the resolution.

The paradox of the last line

‘I do not think of thee—I am too near thee.’ This last line contradicts the first. The poem began ‘I think of thee!’ and ends ‘I do not think of thee’. A paradox is a statement that seems contradictory but reveals a truth, and the truth here is that thinking of someone is what we do when they are absent. When they are present, we simply are with them.

The line also completes the poem's argument. Thought was the problem: it hid the beloved. Presence is the solution: it makes thought unnecessary. The speaker's love has moved from imagination to experience.

The dash in the middle of the line is a hinge. On one side, the denial; on the other, the reason. The rhyme on ‘thee’ closes the line, as it closes two other lines in the sestet. The beloved's name, in its intimate form, is the last sound of the poem.

What just happened

• The last line contradicts the first.
• Thought belongs to absence; presence replaces it.
• The rhyme on ‘thee’ ends the poem.

Why it matters. The paradox resolves the poem's problem in one line.

What to remember

• Learn the first and last lines together.
• Paradox = apparent contradiction, real truth.

Close study: the first four lines

The first four lines set up everything. ‘I think of thee!’ is a complete sentence, ended by an exclamation mark, and it sounds like a declaration of devotion. Then comes the dash, and the sentence keeps going. That dash is important: it shows the thought running on, growing beyond what the speaker meant, exactly as the vines will.

‘my thoughts do twine and bud / About thee’. The auxiliary ‘do’ adds emphasis — her thoughts really do this — and the two verbs give two kinds of growth. To twine is to wind closely round; to bud is to sprout new shoots. The thoughts are both clinging and multiplying. ‘About thee, as wild vines, about a tree’ repeats ‘about’, so the line itself seems to wind round its subject.

‘Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see / Except the straggling green which hides the wood.’ The growth reaches its consequence. Broad leaves cover the trunk, and ‘soon’ there is nothing to see except greenery. ‘Straggling’ makes it untidy and uncontrolled. The final word, ‘wood’, means the tree's timber — the solid, real thing — now hidden.

By the end of four lines a declaration of love has become a description of a problem. That is the poem's first surprise, and it is worth a paragraph in any essay: Barrett Browning shows love's own expression getting in love's way.

What just happened

• ‘I think of thee!’ runs on past its full stop through a dash.
• ‘twine and bud’: clinging and multiplying growth.
• The vines hide the ‘wood’, the real tree.

Why it matters. Four lines turn a declaration into a problem.

What to remember

• The dash shows thought running on.
• ‘wood’ = the solid, real man.

Close study: the turn

The turn in a Petrarchan sonnet usually comes at line nine, but in Sonnet 29 the change of direction begins earlier, at line five, with ‘Yet’. ‘Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood / I will not have my thoughts instead of thee’. The speaker stops describing and starts deciding.

‘Be it understood’ is a formal phrase, the language of declarations and agreements. It makes her refusal sound like a public statement of terms. ‘I will not’ is firm and wilful. And the object of her refusal is her own thoughts: she will not accept them as a substitute for the man.

‘Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly / Renew thy presence’. The exclamation shows how strongly she feels; then ‘Rather’ — instead — introduces the alternative she wants, and ‘instantly’ makes it urgent. The line break after ‘instantly’ creates a tiny pause, and the command, ‘Renew thy presence’, falls at the start of the next line with force.

So the poem's turning point is a shift from mood to will: from reflecting on her thoughts to commanding her beloved. In an essay, you can argue that the early turn shows impatience — the speaker cannot wait for the sonnet's usual moment to change direction.

What just happened

• The turn begins early, at ‘Yet’ in line five.
• ‘be it understood’: formal terms; ‘I will not’: firm will.
• ‘instantly / Renew thy presence’: urgent command.

Why it matters. The turn shows the speaker moving from reflection to command.

What to remember

• An early turn = impatience.
• ‘Rather’ introduces what she truly wants.

Imagination and love

The poem raises a question that applies far beyond its own situation: can thinking about someone get in the way of knowing them? When people are apart, they fill the gap with imagination — memories, hopes, an idea of the other person. That idea can grow until it replaces the person themselves.

Sonnet 29 shows a speaker who notices this happening and refuses it. Her thoughts are loving — they grow from devotion — but they have hidden the man. She would rather have the man, with all the reality of his presence, than her own idea of him. That is a mature view of love: it prefers the real over the ideal.

This makes an interesting contrast with Porphyria's Lover, where the speaker does the opposite: he kills his beloved to keep her as a perfect idea for ever. Barrett Browning's speaker shatters the idea to reach the person; Browning's speaker destroys the person to keep the idea. An essay that sets these two poems side by side can make a powerful argument about what it means to love someone.

What just happened

• Imagination can replace a person with an idea of them.
• The speaker prefers the real man to her idea of him.
• Porphyria's lover does the reverse.

Why it matters. The poem's insight about imagination makes for strong comparison.

What to remember

• Real over ideal.
• A powerful pairing with Porphyria's Lover.

Readings to weigh

A celebratory reading takes the poem as a joyful hymn to presence: love at its fullest needs no thought because the beloved is here. The violent shattering is joy breaking out.

A self-critical reading focuses on the speaker's judgement of her own thoughts. She recognises that imagination can replace a real person with an idea, and she chooses reality. The poem is wise about how love can mislead itself.

A gendered reading emphasises the form and the voice. A woman takes over a man's tradition, speaks with authority and makes the beloved answer to her command. The poem rewrites who gets to speak in love poetry. All three readings can be argued from the text; choose one and use the others to test it.

What just happened

• Celebratory: joy in presence.
• Self-critical: imagination can mislead love.
• Gendered: a woman takes over a male form.

Why it matters. Weigh readings with evidence from the poem.

What to remember

• Choose one reading.
• Test it against the others.

The extended metaphor: vine and tree

The whole poem is built on one extended metaphor: her thoughts are vines; he is a tree. An extended metaphor is one developed across many lines, and this one carries the entire argument.

Vines are often used as images of clinging, faithful love: they hold on and grow close. Barrett Browning keeps that meaning but adds another. Vines can also smother and hide what they grow on. So her thoughts are loving, but they are also a problem. The metaphor lets the poem hold both ideas at once.

The tree, by contrast, is strong, rooted and upright; naming it a palm-tree adds height and rarity. The beloved is what is real and valuable. By making her own thoughts the vines rather than making him the problem, the speaker criticises herself, not him. That self-awareness is one of the poem's strengths.

What just happened

• Thoughts = vines; beloved = tree.
• Vines cling lovingly but can smother.
• The speaker criticises her own imagination.

Why it matters. The metaphor carries both love and its danger.

What to remember

• Extended metaphor = the whole argument.
• Self-criticism, not criticism of him.

The speaker's voice: commands and exclamations

The speaker's voice is strong. She exclaims (‘I think of thee!’, ‘dearer, better!’, ‘shattered everywhere!’), declares (‘I will not have my thoughts instead of thee’) and commands (‘Renew thy presence’, ‘Rustle thy boughs’, ‘set thy trunk all bare’, ‘let these bands of greenery … Drop’).

Imperatives — command verbs — are the most striking feature. They make the speaker active and decisive. She does not wait or plead; she tells. In a tradition where women in love poems were silent and passive, that is remarkable.

Count them: renew, rustle, set, let. Four commands in four lines. The density of imperatives in the sestet is unusual in a love poem and gives the second half of the sonnet a driving energy that matches the bursting, shattering images it describes.

Dashes and run-on lines add urgency: ‘Rather, instantly / Renew thy presence’ pushes across the line break as if she cannot wait. Yet all this passion is held inside a strict Petrarchan form. The tension between the urgent voice and the controlled form is part of the poem's energy.

What just happened

• Exclamations, declarations and commands.
• Imperatives make her active and decisive.
• Urgent voice inside strict form.

Why it matters. The voice shows a woman who knows what she wants.

What to remember

• Count the imperatives.
• Passion against control.

Sound and rhyme

The octave rhymes ABBAABBA: bud, tree, see, wood; understood, thee, instantly, should. The sestet rhymes CDCDCD: bare, insphere thee, everywhere, hear thee, air, near thee. Three lines in the sestet end on ‘thee’, giving the poem's final lines a repeated sound that keeps returning to the beloved.

These are feminine rhymes in the sestet — rhymes on an unstressed final syllable, such as ‘insphere thee’ and ‘hear thee’. They give a falling, gentle ending to the lines, softening the violence of the shattering vines.

There is also sound imagery: the boughs ‘rustle’, the greenery drops ‘heavily’ and ‘burst[s]’. The sounds make his presence physical — something heard as well as seen.

What just happened

• Octave ABBAABBA; sestet CDCDCD.
• Three sestet lines end on ‘thee’.
• Sound imagery makes presence physical.

Why it matters. Sound enacts the poem's movement towards the beloved.

What to remember

• The rhyme on ‘thee’ = presence.
• Rustling boughs = a living man.

Key words

Some words need precise meanings. Twine means to wind closely round something. Bud means to sprout new growth. Straggling means growing untidily and spreading. Nought means nothing. Insphere means to enclose all round, as within a sphere.

Renew means to restore or bring back — the beloved's presence has been displaced by her thoughts and must be brought back. Boughs are large branches. Art is the old form of ‘are’ used with ‘thou’: ‘Who art dearer, better’ means ‘who are dearer, better’.

Using these meanings precisely helps analysis. ‘Insphere’ makes the thoughts sound like a prison closed around him; ‘straggling’ makes them sound untidy and out of control; ‘renew’ shows that she sees his real presence as something she had lost to her own imagination.

What just happened

• twine, bud, straggling: growth.
• insphere: enclosure; renew: restoration.
• art: the old form of ‘are’.

Why it matters. Precise meanings sharpen analysis.

What to remember

• ‘insphere’ = a prison of greenery.
• ‘renew’ = presence restored.

The world behind the poem

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most celebrated poets of her day. Sonnets from the Portuguese, the sequence this poem comes from, was published in 1850. It was written during her courtship with Robert Browning, whom she married in 1846. The two poets first came to know each other through letters.

The sonnet tradition she inherited was male. From Petrarch onwards, the typical sonnet showed a man longing for a distant, idealised woman who did not answer. Barrett Browning's sequence gives the voice to a woman, and in this poem the woman commands her beloved and achieves closeness rather than unending longing.

Victorian society expected women to be modest and passive in love. Open expressions of female desire were unusual. A woman who addresses a man as ‘my palm-tree’, declares she will not accept thoughts instead of him, and orders him to be present, speaks with a confidence that challenged those expectations.

Using context. In an essay: because the sonnet tradition gave men the voice and women the silence, a sonnet in which a woman commands her beloved to ‘Renew thy presence’ turns the form around — and the closeness of the final line replaces the distance the tradition was built on.

What just happened

• Published 1850; written during a courtship begun in letters.
• The sonnet tradition was male.
• Victorian women were expected to be passive in love.

Why it matters. Context shows how much the poem's voice and ending change the form.

What to remember

• Attach context to a line.
• No paragraphs of biography.

Comparing Sonnet 29

Love's Philosophy is the classic pairing. Both poems use nature to express longing, and both are addressed to a beloved as ‘thee’. But Shelley's speaker uses nature as evidence to persuade someone who has not yet kissed him, and ends with an unanswered question; Barrett Browning's speaker uses nature as a metaphor for her own thoughts, and ends in fulfilled closeness.

Porphyria's Lover gives a striking contrast. Browning's speaker wants to fix his beloved as a perfect image for ever and kills her to do it; Barrett Browning's speaker rejects her image of the beloved in favour of the living man. Winter Swans and Letters from Yorkshire offer modern poems about closeness and distance, and let an essay compare how presence is reached.

Use this in an essay. Both Barrett Browning and Shelley use the natural world to voice longing, but where Shelley's speaker gathers rivers and mountains as evidence for a kiss he has not been given, and is left with an unanswered question, Barrett Browning's speaker turns her own thoughts into wild vines and orders them shattered — and her sonnet ends not in a question but in the paradox of being too near to think.

What just happened

• Love's Philosophy: nature as evidence against nature as metaphor.
• Porphyria's Lover: image against living presence.
• Winter Swans, Letters from Yorkshire: modern closeness and distance.

Why it matters. Comparison is the task itself.

What to remember

• Compare methods.
• Name the difference that matters.

A model comparative paragraph

Use this in an essay. Both poems are spoken to an absent beloved, but they use absence in opposite ways. Byron's speaker in When We Two Parted fills the absence with grief: the lover's name is a ‘knell’, the love was secret, and the poem ends returning to ‘silence and tears’. Barrett Browning's speaker fills the absence with thought — her thoughts ‘twine and bud’ about her beloved ‘as wild vines, about a tree’ — but she recognises that thought is not enough and commands him to ‘Renew thy presence’. Byron's circular structure traps his speaker in absence for ever; Barrett Browning's Petrarchan turn carries hers out of it, so that the last line finds her ‘too near’ even to think. One poem shows absence as a permanent wound; the other shows it as a problem love can solve.

How it works: the opening sentence makes a comparative claim about how each poem uses absence; each poem gets precise references with their effects; structure is compared in both; and the ending names the difference sharply.

Practise writing a paragraph like this with a different partner — Love's Philosophy or Porphyria's Lover — keeping the same shape: claim, evidence and effect in each poem, a structural point, and a final difference.

Time yourself when you practise. In the exam a paragraph of this quality should take about eight to ten minutes, and three or four of them, with a short introduction and conclusion, make a complete answer. Write one now with Love's Philosophy as the partner, then check it against the model: is there a comparative claim, precise evidence from both poems, a point about structure, and a final difference?

What just happened

• Comparative claim about method.
• Evidence and effect in both poems.
• Structure compared; a sharp final difference.

Why it matters. The model shows comparison as argument.

What to remember

• Claim — evidence — effect — difference.
• Compare structure in both.

Grade 9 moves on this poem

Top answers see that the poem's problem is the speaker's own imagination, read the form as part of the argument, and use the sonnet tradition as context that changes the reading.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: The speaker compares her lover to a tree.

Write: The extended metaphor is mainly about the speaker's own thoughts: they grow like wild vines until they hide the tree, so the poem presents imagination as something that can smother the love it expresses.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet.

Write: The Petrarchan structure turns a problem into a resolution: the octave shows thoughts hiding the beloved, the turn brings the command to renew his presence, and the sestet ends in the paradox of being too near to think.

Grade 9 upgrade. Instead of: The speaker loves him very much.

Write: The speaker's imperatives — renew, rustle, let drop — give a woman a commanding voice in a form traditionally used by men to address silent women, so her love is active rather than devotional.

Each upgrade explains what the method does and why it matters.

What just happened

• The problem is her imagination.
• Form as argument.
• Context that changes the reading.

Why it matters. These habits lift an answer into the top band.

What to remember

• Self-criticism in the metaphor.
• A woman's voice in a man's form.

The phrases to carry

If you choose Sonnet 29 from memory, carry a set of short, exact phrases covering the octave, the turn and the sestet.

Nine phrases for the whole sonnet

• ‘I think of thee!’ — the opening exclamation.
• ‘my thoughts do twine and bud’ — the vine metaphor begins.
• ‘as wild vines, about a tree’ — the simile.
• ‘the straggling green which hides the wood’ — thoughts hiding him.
• ‘O my palm-tree’ — affectionate apostrophe.
• ‘I will not have my thoughts instead of thee’ — the decision.
• ‘Renew thy presence’ — the command.
• ‘burst, shattered everywhere!’ — violent desire.
• ‘I am too near thee’ — the paradox.

For each phrase, prepare one sentence of analysis and one link. ‘as wild vines, about a tree’ links to Shelley's natural imagery; ‘Renew thy presence’ links to the absent beloveds of Byron and Dooley; ‘too near thee’ links to the closeness of Winter Swans.

What just happened

• Learn nine short, exact phrases.
• Prepare one analysis for each.
• Prepare one link for each.

Why it matters. Exact phrases make a closed-book comparison possible.

What to remember

• Cover octave, turn and sestet.
• Learn the first and last lines.

In the exam

If Sonnet 29 is printed, read it twice. Mark the vine metaphor, the turn, the imperatives, the shattering, and the paradox of the final line. Decide your argument before choosing a partner.

If you choose it from memory, carry its shape — octave of thoughts that hide, turn to command, sestet of shattering and nearness — and your nine phrases. Write a comparative thesis first, then three or four paragraphs with both poems and a method in each.

Put context in single clauses: the sonnet tradition, the courtship, Victorian expectations of women. Avoid the two traps: saying the poem ‘compares the man to a tree’ and stopping, and writing about the Brownings' lives instead of the poem.

What just happened

• Mark the metaphor, turn, imperatives and paradox.
• Thesis first; both poems in every paragraph.
• Context in clauses.

Why it matters. A plan turns the sonnet's argument into yours.

What to remember

• The problem is her thoughts.
• No biography paragraphs.