Summary
The speaker finishes her thought from the previous line, explaining that a love based on impermanent things is itself impermanent. Then she pivots, explaining that she also doesn't wish to be loved out of pity or comfort. Even if she needs comfort now, she may not want it later, and a love based on comfort might fade in that situation. Instead, she asks to be loved solely for love's sake, because love is itself eternal.
Analysis
After line eight, the poem enters its second major section, developing new rhyme patterns and, simultaneously, a new angle to its main argument. Here, even while the iambic pentameter meter of the poem's first eight lines remains, its ABBA rhyme scheme is replaced by a CDCDCD pattern. This difference lets us know that a change in subject matter is occurring. The CDCDCD pattern is also more dramatic in itself, fully repeating after only two lines and therefore evoking the speaker's intensifying emotions. This change in rhyme, tone, and subject matter is called a volta, and it typically occurs after the eighth line of an Italian sonnet. It usually marks the speaker's attempt to make their point in a different way, or to tackle a related but slightly different point.
Here, the speaker voices a new request. Whereas before she asked her lover not to base his love on her own impermanent characteristics, she now asks him not to base it on his own pity for her. In many ways, this echoes the speaker's previously voiced concerns. In both cases, she worries that a love formed around human traits—regardless of what they are—will be no more lasting than those traits themselves. This part of the speaker's argument, though, shows a subtle but important difference. Here, the speaker is also asking her lover not to base his love around his own fleeting emotions. The phrase "Neither love me for/Thine own dear pity[]" suggests that the speaker is nervous about her lover feeling more attached to his own emotions of pity and sympathy than to the speaker herself. Moreover, she hints, a love based on comforting someone—despite the kindness of such an act—essentially depends upon one of the lovers remaining in a state of weakness and distress. She recoils at the idea that her own sadness should be a prerequisite for her listener's feelings. In this way, Browning again buries an interrogation of gender norms within a broader exploration of love, asking readers to consider whether feminine weakness, as a romantic ideal, is really a path to lasting love.
The speaker makes a series of undeniably sound points, defended logically, about why she doesn't wish to be loved for the various reasons she lists. However, by line twelve, readers may be left frustrated. After all, the speaker doesn't want to be loved for any of her own attributes, nor for her loved one's own feelings about her. What alternative does this leave? In the final two lines, she gives an answer: the speaker wants a love free from ego entirely. She hopes that a radically pure version of love that exists for its own sake, rather than in the service of some other emotion, can truly last forever.
