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I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death. This poem is in the public domain. Born in 1806 at Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a celebrated English poet of the Romantic Movement.
- Summary
- Themes
- Structure and Form
- Literary Devices
- Speaker of Sonnet 43
- Detailed Analysis
- Historical Background
- Similar Poems
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Sonnet 43′ by Elizabeth Barrett Browning(Bio | Poems) describes the love that one speakerhas for her husband. She confesses her ending passion. It is easily one of the most famous and recognizable poems in the English language. In the poem, the speaker is proclaiming her unending passion for her beloved. She tells her lover just how deeply her love...
Browning engages with themes of love/devotion and relationships in ‘Sonnet 43’.From the first lines, it’s clear that this is going to be a love poem. She addresses her listener, likely her husband Robert Browning, and tells him that there are many reasons why she loves him and that she’s going to list them out. As the poem progresses the language b...
‘Sonnet 43’ is classified as a sonnet because it contains fourteen lines of poetry and has a fixed rhyme scheme of abba abba cdcdcd. This is the traditional pattern of a Petrarchan sonnet, one of the two major sonnet forms. (The other is the Shakespearean sonnet which rhymes ABABCDCDEFEFGG).The poem also makes use of the usual metrical pattern asso...
In ‘Sonnet 43,’ Browning makes use of several literary devices. These include but are not limited to imagery, simile, and alliteration. The first of these is one of the most impactful literary devices that a poet can use. It can be seen through the poet’s ability to create images that appeal to or activate the reader’s sense. These are things that ...
One can assume, although it is not 100% certain, that Browning is also the speaker of the poemsince it is well known just how deeply she and Robert Browning loved and cared for each other. The speaker is talking directly to her beloved in the sonnet; she uses personal pronouns such as “I” and “you.”
Line 1
Based on the initial line, it appears that the speaker has been asked a question prior to reciting ‘Sonnet 43‘. The first line also serves as the motivation for the rest of the work. Barrett Browning writes, She then uses the last thirteen lines of the poem to show just how much she loves her husband.
Lines 2-4
Lines 2-4 of ‘Sonnet 43‘ provide the first way in which the speaker loves her husband. Barrett Browning writes, Here she is describing that her love is as deep and wide and tall as it can possibly be. It is so deep and wide and tall, in fact, that she cannot even “see” the edges of it: it is infinite. Barrett Browning uses consonance in line two in order to convey just how much she loves her husband. The repetitionof the “th” sound gives the line movement, which signifies that her love for hi...
Lines 5-6
In the next two lines, Barrett Browning continues to show her husband how much she loves him. She writes, These lines are particularly lovely in their simplicity. While her love knows no bounds, the speaker also loves her beloved in ordinary, everyday life. She needs him as much as she needs other basic necessities of life.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning(Bio | Poems) fell in love with Robert Browning(Bio | Poems) after he reached out to her about her writing. The couple wrote letters back and forth to each other before finally marrying, knowing full well that the marriage would not be accepted by Barrett Browning’s father. Their marriage was not only one filled with love ...
Readers should also seek out Browning’s other love poems, such as ‘Sonnet 29’ and ‘Sonnet 14’. Her husband, Robert Browning, also wrote some interesting love poems. These include ‘Love in a Life’ and ‘Parting at Morning’. Other poems that are related to Browning’s ‘Sonnet 43,’ include ‘I Said to Love’ by Thomas Hardy, ‘Love Poem’ by Elizabeth Jenni...
A famous love poem by the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who expresses her unending passion for her husband Robert Browning in various ways. The poem uses imagery, simile, and alliteration to describe her love as deep, wide, tall, and pure.
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“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” is a sonnet by the 19th-century poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is her most famous and best-loved poem, having first appeared as sonnet 43 in her collection Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).
Read the famous poem "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most popular sonnets in English literature. Learn about its context, meaning, and analysis on Poetry Foundation.
A famous love poem from the sequence Sonnets from the Portuguese, where the speaker lists the ways of their love for their beloved. The poem uses metaphysical and religious language to express the all-encompassing nature of love.
The question that opens the poem—“How do I love thee?”—is an example of aporia, the expression of real or pretended doubt in order to make a point. Browning employs aporia as a rhetorical device to emphasize the intensity of love that the speaker feels for her beloved.
A famous sonnet from the Sonnets from the Portugese, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning during her courtship with Robert Browning. It expresses her love in various ways, from the soul to the body, from the ideal to the practical, from the past to the future.
