What is the author's style in Sonnet XXIX by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?

"Sonnet XXIX" follows, to an extent, the metrical pattern of the Petrarchan sonnet: the poem's iambic pentameter is mostly regular, except for moments when Barrett Browning toys with the meter to emphasize an idea. For example, when she states that her "vines" of thought "Put out broad leaves," the words "out," "broad," and "leaves" are all stressed to suggest the weight of her thoughts. Similarly, consider the line describing Browning's shaking her thoughts off his "palm tree" self:

Drop heavily down—burst, shattered, everywhere!

This line begins with a spondee (a foot with two stressed syllables), followed by an iamb, another spondee, an iamb, and then a pyrrhic (two unstressed syllables):

Drop heavily down—burst, shattered, everywhere!

The sound of this line reflects its sense as the reader's voice reflects the weight of these "heavy" thoughts crashing to the earth.

Rhetorically, the poem also generally follows the Petrarchan pattern, although the poem's "turn" (as the change between the octave and sestet is commonly called) occurs not in the eighth line but in the seventh, when Barrett Browning tells Browning, "Rather, instantly / Renew thy presence."

While "Sonnet XXIX" can be read and enjoyed on its own, it is part of a collection of sonnets titled Sonnets from the Portuguese. These forty-four sonnets make up what is commonly called a sonnet sequence, in which each poem serves as one step in a narrative, emotional, or psychological progression. Petrarch's sonnets, for example, explore the poet's feelings for Laura, his beloved, as the poems in Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese depict her intense love and longing for Browning. Other notable sonnet sequences in English include Sir Philip Sydney's Astrophel and Stella (1591), Michael Drayton's Idea's Mirror (1594), Shakespeare's Sonnets (1609), and John Donne's Holy Sonnets (1639).