Love Thee? By E.B. Browning

¶ … love thee? By E.B. Browning

Love. Throughout time, there have been countless poems about this subject. Men and women, alike, write about falling in love and falling out of love. To date, one of the most well-known poems in the world is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 or "How do I love thee?" As loving, happy and privileged as her childhood was, Elizabeth Barrett Browning never saw herself as a poet other than in terms of her position as a daughter as well as her sense of self in relation to other writers (Mermin 713). Elizabeth and the love of her life, fellow writer and admirer of her work, Robert Browning had a whirlwind courtship through an exchange of letters and then finally meeting and getting secretly married, as her father disapproved of the romance. (Author Unknown 81).

In "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," Elizabeth proclaims her love and undying devotion to her beloved. Written in the Romantic Age, "How do I love thee?" follows the optimistic path as its predecessors. It could be seen as a rebellious gesture to all of the ugliness of the industrious life of England (Author Unknown 81). Overall, the poem is a glorious declaration of love that should be promulgated to today's generation.

The first few lines: "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," Elizabeth describes her love for Robert as reaching as far as her soul can reach- as far as heaven or "the ends of Being and ideal Grace." Such a love is like her faith, it is mysterious and too wide to measure, as she writes that only her soul can fully understand and reach it.

In contrast, she also writes that her love for Robert is as simple as "the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candlelight." By the contrast of describing her love for him as great and as far as heaven and yet as simple and down-to-earth as a "quiet need, by sun and candlelight" she brings love down to the fact that all people need love.

And then she goes on to describe her love as freedom, "I love thee freely, as men strive for Right" and purity, "I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise." It seems as though she is proclaiming not only her freedom in loving Robert but that she freely loves him and purely.