How Do I Love Thee?

Let Me Count the Ways

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The poem is one of the forty-four sonnets that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote
for her husband, Robert, in the 1840s. In 1850, she published them as a series, and she
titled it Sonnets from the Portuguese.
In this sonnet, love is everything. Loving the beloved is the way that the speaker
actually knows she exists. Trying to list the different types of love that she feels, and to
work out the relationships between these different kinds of love, becomes a new way of
expressing her affection and admiration for "thee."
The sonnet does not actually have a title, being known by its first line "How do I
love thee? Let me count the ways". This line tells us that the poem is a list of ways that
the speaker loves her beloved.
In the next lines I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can
reach when feeling out of sight/ For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. she is talking
about how deep is her love for him. She is basically saying that her love is physical but
at the same time it is spiritual. The love she has for him is in her soul, body and mind.
She loves him until she doesnt exist anymore; she loves him as the perfect gift. The
kind of love described in this passage almost sounds more like admiration and esteem
loving someone to the greatest "height" that your soul can go.
The lines I love thee to the level of everyday's/ Most quiet need, by sun and
candle-light. suggest that his love is one of her basic needs, like air and water and she
needs it day and night.
The fact that she loves him freely as in not by force or obligation but by her own
free will is suggested by the line I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
In I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise she is saying that she loves him
purely for love and not the praises and benefits from love.
The following lines I love thee with a love I seemed to lose/ With my lost saints
expresses the speaker's love for "thee" as the kind of love she had for her childhood

heroes and other people she admired. Either she has lost these people because they
died, or she's been disillusioned about them.
In the end of the poem I love thee with the breath,/ Smiles, tears, of all my life!
and, if God choose,/ I shall but love thee better after death., the author emphasizes
the fact that she loves him with the life thats in her. She loves him with the breath that
is in her body, through the happy and sad times in her life, and even after death, beyond
the grave if God will allow it she will still love him forever more.
Once the poem is read the obvious conclusion to be drawn is that the title is posed
as a question and the poem is the answer to this question. The poem goes into
describing how she loves her husband, as in how deep. Not the why she loves him or
the when she loves him. She describes a love that is eternal, that will go on forever
even after death. Loving him is like her second nature, its like the air we all need to
survive. She exhibits many themes in the poem, the obvious one love, admiration,
mortality and identity.
In the sonnet, the speaker describes her love through the use of anaphora,
allusions to the Bible, diction motifs, structure and punctuation. The anaphora I love
thee followed by an explanation on how she loves him emphasizes the extent of her
love. Additionally, the poet repeats the former phrase exactly seven times: possibly
representing the seven days of the week, conveying that she loves him every day. Also,
the anaphora can be an allusion to prayers in the Bible, as these continuously repeat
expressions; therefore, giving the sonnet a prayer like tone to show that her love is
Holy. Saying that only her soul can reach the extreme love, found at the ends of Being
and ideal Grace demonstrates that her affection towards her beloved is as great as her
love towards God comparing him to the Lord means putting her loved one above and
beyond any living thing on Earth.
The punctuation also plays a great role in the description of the poets love. Both
an explanation mark, and a question mark are found in the first line of the sonnet; these
represent the poets excitement about the topic and show the great importance she has
towards it.

The nature of poets love

The poet believes that every man has basic ethical goodness in him which helps him
choose the right path. Her affection for her beloved is as effortless as a mans
abstention from what is wrong. This means that the love in her heart comes to her as
naturally as the intrinsic goodwill present in mankind. She further adds that she does
not love or write about it with expectations of praise in return. She writes about it to
show to the world and her beloved the love which grips her heart through her true
words.
The poet while shedding further light upon her love tells us that the passion which she
feels for her better half is like the one which she felt when she was deeply grieved.
Passion arising out of a grieved heart is of the deepest kind. She says that after falling
in love with her beloved those old grievances seem insignificant now as all that passion
which they infused in her then gets used up in loving her beau now. Her love is of the
kind which pulls the poet out of faithlessness.
When she is with her love she feels the same sense of security which she felt when she
was a kid. When we are kids we are unaware of the unfairness of the world and believe
in goodness but as we grow up that belief dwindles. The poet is taken back to that
childhood faith of hers after falling in love with her soul-mate.

How Do I Love Thee Sonnet XVIII

Both, Elizabeth Barrett Brownings How Do I Love Thee and William
Shakespeares Sonnet XVIII, explore the universal theme of eternal, transcending love.
Similarly both sonnets are confessions of love towards a male subject. Brownings is a
passionate love, one that the Greeks referred to as eros: Eros is Love who overpowers

the mind, and tames the spirit in the breasts of both Gods and men. Shakespeares,
however, is the love of agape. It is the love one feels for his family and friends. In
dealing with the theme of love, both poems reference the beauty of their emotions, and
the everlasting nature of such beauty.
Barretts How Do I Love Thee follows the structure of a Petrarchan sonnet, and is
therefore written in iambic pentameter. It consists of 14 lines, and is divided into an
octave and a sestet. The octave presents the primary problem facing the author, in this
case being the question of her declaration of love. The sestet resolves the problem
presented by clarifying the ways in which the author loves her beloved an claiming that
her love would be strengthened in the afterlife.
Shakespeares sonnet follows the structure of a classical Shakespearean sonnet,
and as such, is written in iambic pentameter. It consists of 14 lines, divided into three
quatrains and a rhyming couplet. The rhyme scheme introduces the primary notion of
the sonnet, it being the comparison of the speakers beloved to a summers day. The
second quatrain strengthens the comparison of the beloved to a summers day. The
final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that
respect: his beauty will last forever and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains
how the beloveds beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is
preserved in the poem, which will last forever.
Both the poems end with a reference to the future. Shakespeare says that his
friend will live forever through his poem and in Sonnet 43 the poetess expresses that
her love for her beloved will continue after death if God gives her permission. The
repetition of I love thee contributes to the effect of accumulation.
In conclusion, the Elizabeth Brownings sonnet expresses in a simple manner a
declaration of an ultimate love, a profound feeling comprising both elements from
physical and spiritual sphere. Her simplicity in enumerating the reasons offers purity to
the feeling as she says in one of sonnets lines: I love thee purely. However, the poem
seems a passing from a level dealing with the everydays needs which also a real
importance to a supernatural level dealing with a feeling of love transcending death.

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