Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Sonnet 42

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Spatial metaphor

Love measured as physical space—depth, breadth, height. She's making abstract emotion geometrically concrete, like surveying land or mapping territory.

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 everyday's

Everyday vs. transcendent

Notice the shift: after cosmic soul-reaching, she pivots to ordinary domestic life. The same love operates at both scales simultaneously.

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

Political simile

"Men strive for Right"—1840s context matters. She's equating romantic love with abolitionism and reform movements. Love as political conviction.

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,

Lost saints

She lost Catholic faith in her twenties. This love replaces religious devotion—the "lost saints" are literally the saints she stopped believing in.

Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Counting Trick

The opening question promises enumeration—"Let me count the ways"—but Barrett Browning never actually counts. No "first" or "second," no numbered list. Instead she uses anaphora ("I love thee" repeated nine times) to create the *feeling* of counting without the structure. It's a catalog that refuses to be catalogued.

This matters because the poem argues love exceeds measurement even as it pretends to measure. Each "way" bleeds into the next: spatial (depth/breadth/height), temporal (everyday, childhood, "all my life"), spiritual (soul, Being, Ideal Grace), political (freely, purely). The categories overlap and contradict. You can't actually separate "freely" from "purely" from "with passion"—they're the same love described from different angles.

The final line breaks the pattern. After eight "I love thee" statements, she switches to future tense: "I shall but love thee better after death." "But" is doing heavy work here—it means "only" (I shall only love thee better), which is simultaneously a limitation and an intensification. Death won't end this love; it will improve it.

What She's Not Saying

CONTEXT This is Sonnet 43 from *Sonnets from the Portuguese* (1850), written secretly during her courtship with Robert Browning. Her father violently opposed the relationship—he disinherited all children who married. She was 40, an invalid, when Robert pursued her. They eloped to Italy in 1846.

Notice what's absent: no physical description of the beloved. No eyes, hair, smile. No narrative of how they met. No praise of his virtues. This isn't a poem about Robert Browning—it's about the speaker's capacity for love. Every line is "I love" or "my soul" or "my old griefs." The beloved is barely present except as "thee."

This makes the poem weirdly portable. It's become a wedding reading precisely because it's not specific to one relationship. Barrett Browning describes love as something she *does* with her whole autobiography—her lost faith, her childhood, her grief, her daily needs. The beloved receives this love but doesn't generate it. She's the active party; he's the object. For a Victorian woman writing to her husband, this is a quiet reversal of expected power dynamics.