SONNET 43

About the Author

English poet, the wife of Robert Browning, the most respected and successful woman poet of the Victorian period, considered seriously for the laureateship that eventually was awarded to Tennyson in 1850. Elizabeth Browning's greatest work, Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850), is a sequence of love sonnets addressed to her husband. Her vivid intelligence and ethereal physical appearance made a lifelong impression to all of the friends of the Brownings, among them Ruskin, Carlyle, Thackeray, Rossetti, Hawthorne, and many others.

Elizabeth Browning was born in Coxhoe Hall, Durham on March 6, 1806. Her father was Edward Moulton Barrett, whose wealth was derived from Jamaican plantations. Her mother was Mary Graham-Clarke. She grew up in the west of England and was largely educated at home by a tutor, quickly learning Latin and Greek and read and write avidly. At the age of 14 she wrote her first collection of verse, The Battle of Marathon. It was followed by An Essay on Mind (1826), privately printed at her father's expense, and a translation of Prometheus Bound (1833) with other poems, which appeared anonymously. Her first work to gain critical attention was The Seraphim, and Other Poems (1838).

In the early 1820s she injured her spine in a riding accident, and was long an invalid, using morphine for the pains for the rest of her life. In 1932 the Barrett family moved to Sidmouth and in 1835 to London, where she began to contribute several periodicals. In 1838, seriously ill as a result of a broken blood-vessel, she was sent to Torquay. After the death of her brother, who drowned in Torqauy, she developed almost morbid fear of meeting anyone, and devoted herself entirely to literature. When her Poems (1844) appeared, it gained a huge popularity and was praised among others by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Elizabeth Browning's name was mentioned six years later in speculations about the successor of Wordsworth as the poet laureate.

At the age of 39 she started a correspondence with the six year younger poet Robert Browning, who knew well her work. Their courtship was kept a close secret from her father, who had forbidden all of his sons and daughters to marry. Next year she ran away from her tyrannical father. In September 1846 she married Robert Browning in a church near Wimpole Street, and the couple settled a week later in Florence. Casa Guide became their base for the rest of Elizabeth's life, although they visited Rome, Siena, Bagni di Lucca, Paris, and London. Their only child, Robert Wiedemann (known as Penini), was born in 1849.

In her late years Elizabeth Browning developed an interest in spiritualism and Italian independence movement. She became supporter of Italian unity, which she advocated in Casa Guidi Windows (1851). She also opposed slavery in her books The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point (1849) and in the political Poems Before Congress (1860). Her magnum opus, Aurora Leigh (1857), was a novel in blank verse about a woman writer, her childhood and pursuit of a literary career. It also dealt such themes as the poet's mission, social responsibilities, and the position of women. Last Poems (1862), issued posthumously, contained some of her best-known lyrics.

Elizabeth Browning died, romantically, in her husband's arms on June 29, 1861 in Florence. After her death the writer Edward FitzGerald expressed no sorrow in his famous lettter: ''Mrs. Browning's Death is rather a relief to me, I must say: no more Aurora Leighs, thank God! A woman of real genius, I know; but what is the upshot of it all? She and her Sex had better mind the Kitchen and their Children: and perhaps the Poor: except in such things as little Novels, they only devote themselves to what Men do much better, leaving that which Men do worse or not at all.'' Among Browning's best known lyrics is Sonnets from the Portuguese - the 'Portuguese' being her husband's pet name for dark-haired Elizabeth, but it could refer to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luiz de Camões. It first appeared in a collected edition in 1850. The work includes the sonnet which begins with the well-known line, 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.'

What Is a Sonnet?

A sonnet is a 14-line poem with a specific rhyme scheme and meter (usually iambic pentameter). This poetry format–which forces the poet to wrap his thoughts in a small, neat package–originated in Sicily, Italy, in the 13th Century with the sonnetto (meaning little song), which could be read or sung to the accompaniment of a lute. When English poets began writing poems in imitation of these Italian poems, they called them sonnets, a term coined from sonnetto. Frequently, the theme of a sonnet was love, or a theme related to love. However, the theme also sometimes centered on religion, politics, or other topics. Poets often wrote their sonnets as part of a series, with each sonnet a sequel to the previous one. For example, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) wrote a series of 154 sonnets on the theme of love.

Browning's Sonnet Series

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) wrote a series of 44 sonnets, in secret, about the intense love she felt for her husband-to-be, poet Robert Browning. She called this series Sonnets From the Portuguese, a title based on the pet name Robert gave her: "my little Portuguese." "Sonnet 43" was the next-to-last sonnet in this series. In composing her sonnets, she had two types of sonnet formats from which to choose: the Italian model popularized by Petrarch (1304-1374) and the English model popularized by Shakespeare (1564-1616). She chose Petrarch's model.

Sonnet 43
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Published in 1850
Text of the Poem
Interpretation


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
thee: the poet's husband, Robert Browning
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
depth, breadth: internal rhyme
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
when . . . Grace: when my soul feels its way into the spiritual realm
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
(out of sight) to find the goal of being alive and living uprightly
I love thee to the level of everyday's
I love you enough to meet all of your simple needs during the
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
day (sun) and even during the night (candle-light)
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
freely: willingly–and just as intensely as men who fight for freedom
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
purely: genuinely, without desire for praise
I love thee with the passion put to use
with an intensity equal to that experienced during suffering or
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
mourning; I love you with the blind faith of a child
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
with . . . saints: with a childlike fervor for saints and holiness that I
With my lost saints!–I love thee with the breath,
seemed to lose when I grew older. breath: echoes breadth, Line 2
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
Smiles . . . life: perhaps too sentimental
I shall but love thee better after death.
their love is eternal, never ending

Rhyme Scheme and Divisions

The rhyme scheme of "Sonnet 43" is as follows: Lines 1 to 8–ABBA, ABBA; Lines 9 to 14–CD, CD, CD. Petrarch's sonnets also rhymed ABBA and ABBA in the first eight lines. But the remaining six lines had one of the following schemes: (1) CDE, CDE; (2) CDC, CDC; or (3) CDE, DCE. The first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet are called an octave; the remaining six lines are called a sestet. The octave presents the theme of the poem; the sestet offers a solution if there is a problem, provides an answer if there is a question, or simply presents further development of the theme. In Browning's "Sonnet 43," the octave draws analogies between the poet's love and religious and political ideals; the sestet draws analogies between the intensity of love she felt while writing the poem and the intensity of love she experienced earlier in her life. Then it says that she will love her husband-to-be even more after death, God permitting.

Sonnet 43 Meter

"Sonnet 43" is in iambic pentameter (10 syllables, or five feet, per line with five pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables), as Lines 2 and 2 of the poem demonstrate.
I LOVE thee TO the DEPTH and BREADTH and HEIGHT My SOUL can REACH, when FEEL ing OUT of SIGHT

Theme: Intense Love

"Sonnet 43" expresses the poet’s intense love for her husband-to-be, Robert Browning. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level (Lines 3 and 4). She loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. She even loves him with an intensity of the suffering (passion: Line 9) resembling that of Christ on the cross, and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Moreover, she expects to continue to love him after death.

Figures of Speech

The dominant figure of speech in the poem is anaphora–the use of I love thee in eight lines and I shall but love thee in the final line. This repetition builds rhythm while reinforcing the theme. Browning also uses alliteration, as follows:

thee, the (Lines 1, 2, 5, 9, 12). thee, they (Line 8) soul, sight (Line 3) love, level (Line 5) quiet, candle-light (Line 6) freely, strive, Right (Line 7) purely, Praise (Line 8) passion, put (Line 9) griefs, faith (Line 10) my, my (Line 10) love, love (Line 11) With, with (Line 12) lost, love (Line 12) lost, saints (Line 12) Smiles, tears (Line 13) (z sound) smiles, all, life (Line 13) shall, love (Line 14) but, better (Line 14) but, better, after (Line 14)

References:
http://www.amherst.edu/~rjyanco94/literature/elizabethbarrettbrowning/poems/sonnetsfromtheportuguese/howdoilovetheeletmecounttheways.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Barrett_Browning
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ebb/huangbiblio.html