Theme

The theme of Barrett Browning’s poem is that true love is an

all-consuming passion. The
quality of true love the poet especially stresses is its spiritual
nature. True love is an
article of faith. References to “soul,” “grace,” “praise,” “faith,”
“saints,” and “God” help
create this impression. The last line con rms the power of
true love, asserting as it does
that it is eternal, surviving even death.
Form
“How Do I Love Thee” is a sonnet. A sonnet is a form of
regular verse, so it will have a
regular rhythm pattern and rhyme scheme. The rhythm
pattern, as it is for most sonnets,
is iambic pentameter, ve beats of an unstressed then
stressed sound in each line:
~
/~/~/~/~/
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
~
/~/~/~/~/
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
Barrett Browning alters the rhythm pattern with extra
stressed sounds—for emphasis—
in the rst and thirteenth lines. Read those lines out loud,
and you will hear the extra
stressed sounds.
The rhyme scheme is abbaabba cdcdcd. Note that some of
the rhymes are not absolute:
ways/grace, for example, and faith/breath. These are called
half-rhymes and they are
included in the assessment of the rhyme scheme.
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 Note that the rhyme scheme divides the poem into two
parts. The abbaabba part is called
the octave (octave for eight) and the cdcdcd section is
called the sestet (sestet for six).
This is a distinctive sonnet pattern, called the Petrarchan
sonnet, named after the Italian
poet Francesco Petrarch, who rst used the form in the
fourteenth century. It is a
common pattern in English poetry. The other common
pattern is the Shakespearean
sonnet, examples of which we will read later in the chapter.
Figurative Language
Barrett Browning uses hyperbole throughout the poem to
underscore the intensity of her
love. She uses clever similes to the same effect, asserting
that she loves as intensely as
the free man determined to champion all that is right (line 7);
as purely as the pious man
at prayer (line 8). Almost half of the lines in the sonnet begin
with the sentence “I love
thee,” which reads like a mantra that reinforces the spiritual
connection she feels.
Context
Elizabeth Barrett met Robert Browning in May of 1845, and
they married in September
of 1846. During their courtship, Elizabeth wrote a series of
forty- ve sonnets expressing
her love for her ancé. When she showed them to Robert,
he recognized their brilliance
and encouraged her to publish them in her next volume of
poems, which came out in
1850. They did realize such an intensely emotional and
personal expression of love
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might make the Victorian English uneasy, and so the poems
were published under the
title Sonnets from the Portuguese, to make it seem as if they
were translations. “How Do
I Love Thee?” is Sonnet 43. The deception was soon
uncovered, and Barrett Browning’s
sonnet sequence came to be revered, second only to
Shakespeare’s, in English literary
history.
How Do I Love Thee?” is the second-to-last sonnet to
appear in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous sequence of
love poems from 1850, Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Browning composed this sequence of forty-four sonnets to
memorialize her love for her husband, the fellow poet
Robert Browning. Because of this biographical fact, many
readers associate the speaker in all the poems with
Browning herself. However, since poems like “How Do I
Love Thee?” don’t feature speci c biographical references
to Browning’s life, it’s also possible to read the speaker as a
more anonymous gure. This poem, which is also known as
“Sonnet 43,” begins with the speaker addressing a rhetorical
question to their beloved: “How do I love thee?” This
question provides the motivation for what follows, which is
essentially a list in which the speaker “count[s] the ways” of
their love (line 1). Overall, the speaker describes their
adoration in metaphysical terms that underscore the all-
encompassing reach of love. The speaker also makes
numerous religious referencesthat frame romantic love as a
spiritual passion. Though “How Do I Love Thee?” belongs in
the same tradition as Shakespeare’s love
sonnets, Browning used the Italian sonnet form rst
developed by the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch.
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Introduction

A poem is a piece of literature that is written to pass certain

messages to people or express various emotions such as
love, hate, or even anger (Glennis, 98). It is because of
these reasons that poetry requires skillful selection of words
and sentence structures so as to make sure that the
contents of a poem are able to pass the desired messages
to the audience who in this case are the readers. There are
a variety of writing techniques that are used in poetry and
they include the use of repetition, metaphor, and similes
among others (Avery, 143). These poetry writing techniques
were well employed by Barrett Browning in her poem, “How
Do I Love Thee?” and therefore this piece of work tries to
analyze some of the techniques used by Barrett in her poem
and also analyze some aspects of the poem.

There are different kinds of poems such as praise poems,

mourning poems, and love poems. Each type of poem can
express an emotion that is different from emotions
expressed by other types of poems. This implies that poems
are not just “empty words” but they are words that are well
organized so as to convey a particular message, opinion, or
idea to the readers. The words can also be well organized to
express certain emotions. The poem, “How Do I Love Thee”
is an example of a love poem or simply a wedding poem.

Writing techniques used in the poem

In this poem, there is heavy use of imagery and word

association to express emotions of love. By studying how
the words in this poem are organized, we can say that these
are words of a bride to a bridegroom. A poem might be
interpreted differently by different people but the major
 theme in a poem always comes out very clearly to every
individual when imagery is well used by the poet. Well-
experienced poets like Barrett Browning was, do not just
use imagery to make their poems look fancier than they
would have looked when imagery was not used but they use
them to create some mental pictures in the minds of the
readers. For example, in the poem “How Do I Love Thee”,
the use of imagery can be seen where the bride is trying to
describe how she loves the bridegroom. In the second line
of the rst verse, the bride says that she loves the
bridegroom to the depth, the breadth, and the height that
her soul can reach. This description creates a mental picture
in the mind of a reader who can now visualize the extent of
the love being described. This description implies that the
love is too much.

Another appropriate use of imagery in this poem is found in

the sixth line. It can be seen that the bride describes her
love for the bridegroom as a “day’s most quiet need by sun
and candlelight”. Barrett used this technique of writing a
poem and a reader is able to appreciate its effect in this
particular poem.

Repetition is another aspect of poetry writing that was well

used by Barrett Browning in this poem. When talking about
a poetic language used by a poet, repetition is usually
recognized because it is a feature that can be identi ed
easily in a poem and it is also a feature that is used by many
poets (Adams, 153). Repetition is usually used in poetry so
as to stress or put emphasis on a particular point or
message being passed across. In the poem, “How Do I
Love Thee”, the phrase, ‘I love thee…’ has been repeated in
every verse of the poem. This repetition gives a reader an
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idea that the main subject matter in this poem is love. This is
because a reader will have to pay attention to any repetition
since it is obvious that a line, phrase, or word is usually
repeated intentionally by a poet to accomplish a speci c
mission.

The effect of repetition in this poem is that it shows the

reader that the writer loves the person being referred to who
in this case we are assuming to be a bridegroom. It captures
the mind of a reader who would actually want to know the
reason why this phrase is repeated so many times. The
theme of this poem is, therefore ‘love’ which is actually
being emphasized by the use of repetition. As it has been
stated earlier, the essence of using repetition is to put
emphasis on a particular point, idea, or emotion. This is well
illustrated by Barrett in this her poem. There might be other
poetry writing techniques that were used by Barrett in writing
this poem but the most notable ones are the ones that have
already been discussed above and their effects can be felt
in the poem.

The use of rhetoric question is a poetic language that

Barrett made good use of in this poem. For example, when
the bride asks a question, “How do I love thee?” it is obvious
that she does not expect an answer from the bridegroom
because we can see that she immediately proceeds to
answer this question by herself. Like other techniques,
rhetoric questions also trigger emotions or compel a reader
to think more about the subject being talked about (Lootens,
128).

Although Barrett made good use of imagery in her poem

“How do I love thee”, there are various changes that a
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modern poet might make to the imagery that was used. For
example, even though imagery usually refers to visual
images, a modern poet can use aural images which is
simply the use of words that sound like their meaning to
create an image in the readers’ mind (Avery, 57). These
aural images are created by a technique called
onomatopoeia. For example, a modern poet can write,
“When I hold your hand and close my eyes, I hear a
murmur…” this can create an image in a reader’s mind. The
murmuring can be interpreted to mean that there are some
people who are complaining when they see the two lovers
together and are therefore against the relationship of the
two lovers.

Another change that a modern poet might make to the

imagery of this poem is to include the use of metonymy.
Metonymy is when a poet mentions one thing while she/he
actually means something else which is closely connected
to the thing that has been mentioned (Adams, 89). For
example, a poet might say, “I love your bright forehead”
while she/he actually means to say, “I love your bright eyes”.

Gender difference in the Victorian age

Considering gender issues, this poem portrays women in

the Victorian age as women who were to love and express
sentiments of love to their men in all possible ways. The
way the speaker in this poem is describing her love for the
bridegroom shows the reader how the women in the
Victorian age were committed in their relationships. In this
poem, very little is talked about concerning the male gender.
For example, the word ‘man’ is only mentioned in line seven
which is, “I love thee freely, as men strive for the right”. From
this line, we are able to get a clue that men in the Victorian
age took it to themselves that it was their right to be loved
by women.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this poem is a very good love poem that is

able to express emotions of love as intended by the writer. It
is also important to note that sentence structure in a poem
must not necessarily be correct but have to be well arranged
in a particular way so as to convey the desired information.
Most grammar mistakes in a poem are intentional because
this is what most poets use as their poetic language but
care is taken so the information is not distorted.