# How Do I Love Thee? analysis

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) — Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850)

This analysis follows how Browning turns a question about love into a measured sequence of spiritual and everyday answers.

Full text from [How Do I Love Thee? — full poem](https://poets.org/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43). Public domain in the US (First published in Sonnets from the Portuguese in 1850, before the US public-domain cutoff.).

## Summary

The speaker answers her opening question by measuring love through the soul, daily need, moral choice, memory, and the whole range of life.[2]

```
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
```

The final conditional promise extends devotion beyond mortal life.[2]

## Meaning and interpretation

The poem makes love both transcendent and practical: spiritual aspiration is brought down to ordinary care by sun and candle-light.[2]

```
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;
```

Repeated declarations make love an act of agency, while religious language gives private affection an ethical and spiritual dimension.[2]

## Themes

### Boundless love

Depth, breadth, height, and afterlife push devotion beyond ordinary measurement.

### Daily devotion

The poem grounds grand feeling in the quiet needs of every day.

### Freedom and moral feeling

Love is described as chosen freely and purely, not imposed from outside.

### Religious devotion

Soul, grace, faith, saints, and God place romantic love beside religious experience.

## Form and meter

This is a Petrarchan sonnet: an octave and sestet with ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme.[3]

Iambic pentameter supports the promise to “count the ways,” while anaphora and enjambment keep the feeling expansive.[2]

## Literary devices

### Anaphora

```
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
```

Repeated “I love thee” clauses add register after register of devotion.

### Measurement imagery

```
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
```

Spatial measurement turns counting into an encounter with the infinite.

### Simile

```
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
```

Ethical comparisons characterize love as voluntary and disciplined.

## Historical context

The sonnet appeared in Sonnets from the Portuguese in 1850; the sequence was written during Browning’s courtship with Robert Browning.[4]

The title presented the sequence as translations, helping frame an intensely personal set of poems for Victorian readers.[4]

## What critics say

> “The poem thus begins as a means of attempting to justify love in rational terms.”
>
> — [LitCharts](https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/elizabeth-barrett-browning/how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways-sonnets-from-the-portuguese-43)

> “Barrett Browning’s poem is not even a Shakespearean sonnet but a Petrarchan one”
>
> — [Interesting Literature](https://interestingliterature.com/2017/05/a-short-analysis-of-elizabeth-barrett-brownings-how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways/)

## Common questions

### What is the poem’s meaning?

The speaker describes love as spiritual, ethical, ordinary, and enduring beyond death.

### What are its themes?

Boundless devotion, daily care, freedom, faith, memory, and eternity.

### What form does it use?

A Petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter with ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme.

## References

- [Academy of American Poets](https://poets.org/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43)

- [LitCharts](https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/elizabeth-barrett-browning/how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways-sonnets-from-the-portuguese-43)

- [Interesting Literature](https://interestingliterature.com/2017/05/a-short-analysis-of-elizabeth-barrett-brownings-how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways/)

- [Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43742/sonnets-from-the-portuguese-43-how-do-i-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways)

## Open the editor

Write with this poem’s meter in the editor: https://lyriic.com/write/iambic-pentameter