Source identified1
Image design Linen
Read & copy
“God forbid you should ever be aught but yourself, my Elspie!”
Meaning & context
Philip answers Elspie’s fear that marriage and class expectations might require her to become someone else by insisting that he wants her to remain herself.
Source details
The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich (1848), represented in Project Gutenberg’s Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough. Philip speaks to Elspie during their courtship conversation after she says she does not want to become “a lady.” The line is fictional verse dialogue and is kept under Philip’s local voice rather than treated as Clough autobiography.