Poem: "How Do I Love Thee?" (Sonnet 43) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Wikimedia)

The poem "How do I Love Thee?" was #43 in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's collection, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). The first line is very famous; a lot of people can recite the first four lines.

What is a sonnet, exactly? Not to get too technical, but basically a sonnet:

• has 14 lines
• is in iambic pentameter (has five beats like this: da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA da-DA)
• if Shakespearean, has three quatrains (groups of four lines) and a couplet (two lines) OR
• if Petrarchan, like this one, has one octave of eight lines and a sestet, a more complex six lines.
• The octave usually has an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme, like the ones here:
• ways - height - sight - grace - day's - light - right - praise
• Here, the final sestet goes CD CD CD (other possibilities include CDE CDE and CDC CDC):
• use - faith - lose - breath - choose - death.

Now, as for the meaning of this sonnet:

• The first half of the octave tells how much the narrator ("I") loves the recipient of the poem ("thee"), basically as far as she can reach in any direction.
• The second half of the octave elaborates on this: she loves him (presumably him) as much as she needs her greatest need, freely and purely.
• The sestet says she lives him as much as she ever grieved, or as the faith she had as a child; she loves him like she used to love the saints before she lost faith in them; she loves him with all of her life's "breath, Smiles, [and] tears"; and if permitted she will love him even more after death than she did with all her life.

Whew!

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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.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

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SOME WORDS:

• thee: an old-fashioned way to say "you"
• depth and breadth and height: the three dimensions ("3D") that define all space

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PRACTICE:

Be sure you know these terms, defined above:

• sonnet
• iambic pentameter
• couplet
• quatrain
• sestet
• octave
• rhyme scheme