by John Gray

Created on: June 16, 2009   Last Updated: June 30, 2009

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet 43 "How do I love thee, let me count the ways" is one of the most famous and widely quoted sonnets outside of Shakespeare. It is a delicately crafted piece of verse which captures the love and affection of one person to another beautifully.

In the poem the narrator almost ponders the opening question aloud "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" it also strikes the reader as playful in nature and not overly sentimental. This is quite a clever aspect to the poem which is twisted emotively in the poem's closing lines. Before this however Elizabeth playfully extends expression of love in repetition and does this in order to maximise the closing tension of the conclusion:

Smiles, tears, of all my life!- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

This belies the rhetorical motifs early in the poem as well as to capture a love which is to extend beyond this lifetime. With these closing lines she is able to take the meaning and value of love to a much higher, even spiritual, level. The delicacy with which she blends together soft imagery such as "candle light" "Grace" and "faith" helps to magnify this feeling enormously.

This poem needs also to be read with religion in mind. Not only is belief in the after-life a taken part of the poem, but the religious imagery which surrounds the poem such as her "soul" and the references to "God" and "saints" and the words "Grace" and "faith" already mentioned, means that this could be read as every much a praise to God as much as to the person she loves.

Within the poem is also an expression of what could be taken as an early form of feminism. In particular the line "I love thee freely, as men strive for Right" is particularly significant for a person arguing for this case. It seems of great importance and vital to true loves aims that her love is chosen "freely" as is her "right" as an individual. Biographically it could also be significant that her father rejected her own love in real life. Here, it could be seen as solidifying and justifying the love which was to separate herself from the grips of her disapproving father. Her love is the pure form of love that comes from the heart and not tied to financial or social gain.

What adds an extra touch to the poem is the sense of movement that exists within the verse. As it says "My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight" and the expression of her love extends to the "depth and breadth and height" of visible plains. Such powerful movement of feeling adds to the energy of the poem as well as giving it a child-like integrity. Her love is that of "childhood's faith" as she says, it is the hope and innocent expression that her love will last forever.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was married to the equally famous poet Robert Browning whose verses together captured the hearts and heights of popularity in Victorian England and across the Atlantic. Elizabeth was born in 1806 to a large relatively well off and respectable family. She was a very bright and well read child whose tastes and talents for literature and languages were developed quickly. From an early age she was fluent in Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Italian. The relationship with her family however strained at the thought of her marriage to Robert and as the couple left to Italy she was disowned by her upright father, but lived a happy and joyful life with her husband.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning in this poem brings together much in such a small space as great poets have the ability to do. At first glance it may appear an overtly sentimental piece, however the astute reader soon discovers that this poem is a poem with depth, and its writer a poet of supreme skill and compassion.

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