In Potentia, Browning Sonnets from the Portuguese

Much like the previous works by Sidney, Browning's poem evokes ideas both of gendering and  contradictory love. Foremost is the invocation of two hyper-masculine figures of literature: Adonis and Hercules. Both of these characters were distinct in the masculine beauty they possessed. Yet equally, these figures are representations of “the beautiful death” in art. Both Adonis and Achilles die in terms that could easily be described as homoerotic. One by a boar, a symbol of aggressiveness, the other struck by an arrow. These meditations on death are echoed in the speakers statement “I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,/ The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years.” Death’s contradiction, relating both to sex and physical end, is expressed in the poem’s finality: “Guess now who holds thee?” — “Death,” I said. But, there,/ The silver answer rang, — “Not Death, but Love.”