"Sonnet 43"
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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.
Discussion Questions:
1. What might be some reasons this is such a famous poem?
2. Knowing what you do about EBB from yesterday's introduction post, what parts of this poem seem obviously autobiographical to you?
1. It's not just the same old 'I love you and this is why' it's 'this is HOW I love you', which is different. It's full of imagery, so you can kind of see how much she loved him.
ReplyDeleteGood way to put it! And she doesn't hold back or play coy -- she is all in on this relationship, and we can tell.
Delete2. "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints" made me think about her brother Edward dying. Also the part about 'the passion put to use in my old griefs'.
ReplyDeleteAwww, yes, for sure. She had lost quite a few people by this point -- one sibling did not survive childhood, their mother died when she was a young woman, and then her brother Edward's tragic drowning. And she had her physical pain and infirmities too, which are also griefs.
Delete1. Her poem is about love. SO many poems are about love. I have to be honest, perhaps I'm just young, but you'd think people'd get sick of writing about love. So when I read the first line I was a little like, "Oh, another love poem." But I was chastened in my indifference :P That is a really beautiful poem. I think it's famous because it expresses so beautifully and clearly the simple, sweet love that all people want and so few find. Clearly she is grateful to him for more than something shallow, like just being handsome. This is shown throughout the whole poem really well, but she particularly ties it together I thought, in those last few lines: 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.
ReplyDeleteHe was the things she valued, and by being those things, and kind, he made her love him. But then she tells him the WAYS in WHICH she loves him. This poem is obviously not to some obscure, momentary crush she had. She clearly knows this person well, knows that he already knows why she loves him, and now she's telling him how MUCH she loves him, by telling him how he makes her happy, basically.
I agree -- this isn't a sappy love poem because it isn't superficial. She isn't just attracted physically to this man, she loves him because he sees who she really is. He values her, and she responds by loving him in every way and with every part of herself that she can possibly imagine.
DeleteYou remind me of Paul McCartney's song "Silly Love Songs," which begins:
"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs
But I look around me
And I see it isn't so
Some people want to fill the world
With silly love songs
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know
Cos here I go again..."
People write love poetry because people fall in love. And even when you have only ever been in love with one person, like me, every stage of that love story is worth celebrating -- first falling in love, the stage of commitment when you decide you should get married, being a newlywed, getting comfortable with each other, adding kids to the family, learning how much you can truly depend on each other, looking back on so many memories... even one love story is like a hundred love stories. So people keep writing love poems and love songs ;-) But some are definitely better than others!
2. In the lines, "I love thee with the passion put to use
ReplyDeleteIn 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", I think she's particularly about her brother who died, but also about all the other crosses throughout her life. Her back injury, her general invalidism, the fact that she sort of had an overbearing father, and even all the random little things that make you sad. But she also says "Smiles", so she's also saying all the happy beautiful things she's ever experienced, all the things her life was made out of, she loves her husband and wants to share any future joys and sorrows with him.
Precisely -- she loves him with her whole self. The good, the bad, the happy, the sad. And she's not idealistic about this love -- she never says "and because you will make me happy forever and we will always feel good around each other." She knows how hard life can be, but that makes her know and value him all the more.
Delete