How Do I Love Thee? Analysis - Literary devices and Poetic devices

How Do I Love Thee?

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.

Meanings of How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The sonnet How Do I Love Thee, also known as Sonnet 43, presents a female speaker who announces her extreme love and ways of loving her lover. She is of the view that God will bless her with the ability to love her lover in her post-death period.

Meanings of Lines 1-4

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.

The poet presents a female speaker who presents her question which is rhetorical in nature. The question is how much she loves her lover and then asks the permission of her interlocutor, saying “Let me count…” and goes on to enumerate the ways she loves her lover. The interlocutor happens to be the same lover. She tells him that she loves him from all corners of her soul. The breadth, depth, and height expand her being and soul has had to reach out to use the sensory experience to feel the presence of her love that she does and reaches the ideal grace (divine presence.) These verses contribute to the main idea of the extreme love of the speaker for her lover.

Meanings of Lines 5-8

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.

The speaker continues enumerating the ways she loves her lover. In the first verse, she states that she loves like an everyday requirement and the status of that requirement. She continues loving him even by the sun or by the candlelight. She has full freedom in her love, and she works like men to struggle for their rights. Also, she claims that her love is pure and she is pure in her love, like men praise others from their hearts. Again, the verses continue to contribute to the extremity of her love and its expression through different metaphors and similes.

Meanings of Lines 9-12

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,

The speaker enumerates some other ways to love her lover. She is of the view that she uses the passions that she used to employ during her sorrows. She has had full faith in that passion since her childhood. She also states that she loves her lost saints the most. However, she is now losing that passion for love, but she is using that in loving her lover. In fact, she is using every other element of her physical body to love her lover. These four verses contribute further to the main idea of the poem which is to love a lover to the extreme.

Meanings of Lines 13-14

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

These two verses state that the speaker uses every element of her body to love her lover. In fact, her entire life revolves around this love. That is why she says that if God is with her, she will continue loving her lover even after death. This post-death love, however, depends on the will of God, which seems something having theological touch to this purely mundane love poem. This is the final touch to the main idea of the extremity of the speaker’s love.

Summary of How Do I Love Thee?

Popularity of “How Do I Love Thee?”: The poem ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a popular Victorian love poet. This iconic love sonnet is taken from her book, The Sonnets From the Portuguese, which was published in 1850. The poem shows the speaker’s intense love for his beloved. The unique quality of the poem lies in its enumeration of the ways the speaker would love his beloved.
“How Do I Love Thee?” As a Representative of Love: The speaker of the sonnet poses a rhetorical question, requesting permission to enumerate the ways or methods by which he expresses his love for his beloved. He declares his love for her from every dimension, stating that his soul can reach out to her in numerous ways even if she is out of his sight. He further states that his affection for his beloved has turned into a daily essential, comparable to sustenance. He loves her as if it is the right of every individual and loves her for admiration. The narrator harbors a deep affection for her and is unwilling to employ it to repress his anguish. In spite of the fervor of his sentiments, it seems that he is renouncing her love like the lost saints, though he loves her with all his life. Then, he implores God that if he were to depart, his love for his beloved would become even more profound.
Major Themes in “How Do I Love Thee?” Love, the intensity of love, and spirituality are three major themes of this sonnet. Elizabeth Barret Browning beautifully presented a male speaker who continues enumerating the ways he would love his beloved. He counts every method that could be used to love even in the social and religious sense. Then he goes on to say that even death would not discontinue this love of his that makes the readers feel enter into the realm of spirituality. It occurs in the third verse as well where the speaker talks about his soul and its access to his beloved.

Analysis of Literary Devices Used In How Do I Love Thee?

literary devices are used to bring diversity in the poetic rendition. Their appropriate use helped the writers to convey their thoughts in an impressive way. A few literary devices in the poem are as follows.

Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /ee/ in “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”.
Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /t/ and the sound /l/ in “Yet only part of my blood loves that memory” and the sound of /n/ and the sound /r/ in “yet never owned their own.”
Anaphora: This sonnet uses a rhetorical device where the first part of the first clause is repeated in the next. “I love thee” is repeated several times, making it a good example of anaphoric usage.
Enjambment: It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to an end at a line break; rather, it rolls over to the next line. For example,

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.

Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. For example, “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height”, “For the ends of being and ideal grace” and “I love thee with the passion but to use.”
Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different. The poet used an extended metaphor of love to present it as a different thing simultaneously.
Rhetorical Question: Rhetorical question is a question that is not asked to receive an answer; it is just posed to make the point clear. The writer has posed rhetorical questions in the beginning of the poem to emphasize her point such as “How do I love thee?”
Symbolism: Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from literal meanings. The poem shows the use of symbols of the sun, candlelight, or saints to show the intensity of love.

Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in How Do I Love Thee?

Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.

Rhyme Scheme: The sonnet follows ABBA, ABBA and CDCDCD rhyme scheme.
Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are two stanzas in this sonnet like all other sonnets.
Octave: This is the first part of the sonnet as it starts from “How do I love?…and ends on…turn from praise.”
Sestet: This is the second stanza in a sonnet is sestet.

Quotes to be Used

These lines from the sonnet “How Do I Love Thee?” are appropriate to use when showing love for somebody.