In Elizabeth Barret Browning's sonnet, "Beloved thou hast brought me many flowers," what does the speaker think of the flowers?

The speaker's thoughts, in this complex poem, on the
flowers given her by her beloved are clouded by the Shakespearean style play on words
that follows after the lines about the flowers: "Take back these thoughts ...." What is
important here is that "take back" represents the double meaning words can have; she is
wittily and charmingly toying with her beloved, who has apparently been away as the
flowers continued unrenewed "all summer through and
winter."

"Take back" isn't used in it's sense of to return
a former gift now spurned and rejected due some breach of faith on the givers part. If
"take back" were used in this way, she would not have said the flowers continued to grow
in the room they grace through both summer and winter without seeming to miss the "sun
and showers." She would have said something like his inconstancy or his betrayal had
made them fade and wither--so take them back--a blighted reminder of crushed hopes.

"Take back" is used to mean allow me to return in kind--as you gave to me, so
do I give to you. This is set up and confirmed by the line that precedes "Take back." It
reads: "So, in the like name of that love of ours, ...." A paraphrase of this line might
be: "Therefore, according to our love that has likewise grown without the renewal of
your presence, ...." What precisely is he to take back?

She
is asking him to take back (as you gave me, so I give you) the words that "here [by the
flowers] unfolded too." These words were so deeply welcome and embedded in her heart
that on all the "warm and cold days" of the lapsed time through which they were
seemingly parted, she "withdrew them from her heart's ground," or lifted them from their
abiding place in her heart to view as she also viewed the flowers. Browning is of course
continuing the garden metaphor with "unfolded" and "ground" and later with
“weeding.”

What were those words that he spoke and she is
now returning? Hints are contained in the last five lines. Eglantine is a simple English
rose that symbolically represents purity. Ivy is a seemingly endless climbing vine that
symbolizes fidelity. It is the eglantine and the ivy, which together symbolize the
speaker, that she asks him to (1) to take back;  (2) to accept as she accepted his
flowers; (3) to store where they shall not "pine," which means to wither away with grief
or mourning; and to (3) conduct himself so as not to betray her purity and fidelity: "to
keep their colours true." She concludes by saying the gifts she gives him, in kind for
the words he first "unfolded" to her, have "their roots" grown down in her soul: "their
roots are left in mine."

The words he "unfolded" to which
she now says to "Take back" are words declaring his love and devotion, which in
Browning's day was accompanied by a proposal of marriage. One last point to clear up: It
is now easier to see that "Indeed, those beds and bowers / Be overgrown with bitter
weeds and rue" refers to the weeds of loneliness from separation that have grown on her
heart during his absence, which only his loving hand can pluck from that ground: "And
wait thy weeding.”