Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Sonnet #43

This single sonnet that she wrote to her future husband holds one of the most romantic and famous lines in poetry.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,

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”

Written to her husband while they were courting each other, she knew she would love him so intensely that nothing could break the bound. I like the fact that she wrote these poems to, and about him, but he did not know they existed until she showed them to him after they were married. I think it shows the passion she felt for him. In the third line where she talks about loving him with where her soul can reach, I think this is where she starts to talk about loving him even in death, something she confirms with the last line. I also think in the last part of the sonnet where she says:

In my old grief’s, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints,-I love with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life!-and if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.

I think she was possibly referring to her father at this. She went against his wishes to marry this man, and since he would never see her again, she “lost” this love from her childhood.