How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43): poem analysis

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) the full poem, lines numbered

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.

5I love thee to the level of everyday’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.

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

10In 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.

The poem in 60 seconds

The first line is quoted so often that it can sound like a valentine, but the poem is stranger and deeper than that. The speaker measures love in the language of the soul, of justice and of faith, and draws on old griefs, childhood faith and a love she thought she had lost. The last line pushes love past the grave. Students know it as Sonnet 43, though the first edition numbered it 42.

The speaker asks how she loves the person she is speaking to and offers to count the ways. She loves to the full depth, breadth and height her soul can reach when it strains, beyond sight, toward the ends of existence and ideal grace. She also loves at the level of the quietest everyday needs, by sunlight and by candlelight. She loves freely, as people strive for what is right, and purely, as they turn away from praise. She loves with the passion she once spent on old griefs, and with the faith she had as a child. She loves with a love she seemed to lose when she lost her saints. She loves with the breath, smiles and tears of her whole life. And if God chooses, she will love even better after death.

Speaker & situation

SpeakerA lover who speaks as “I.” She is usually read as Elizabeth Barrett herself, since the sequence grew out of her courtship with the poet Robert Browning, but the sonnet names neither of them.

Addressed toThe beloved, called “thee,” who is never named or described. The poem is about the speaker’s love, not the beloved’s qualities.

OccasionThe sonnet belongs to Sonnets from the Portuguese, written during Elizabeth Barrett’s courtship with Robert Browning, whom she married in 1846. It was first published in her Poems of 1850, where it is numbered XLII. When a new sonnet was added as XLII in 1856, this one became XLIII, the number it is known by today.

ToneCalm, sure and devout at first, rising to feeling in lines 12–13, where dashes and an exclamation break in, then settling into quiet confidence in the last line.

Form & sound

FormPetrarchan sonnet; fourteen lines printed as a single block, rhymed as an octave (lines 1–8) and a sestet (lines 9–14).

MeterIambic pentameter. The repeated opening “I love thee” fits the rising iambic beat, so each new claim starts on the same steady pulse.

Rhyme schemeABBAABBA CDCDCD. The octave rhymes ways, Grace, everyday’s and Praise with height, sight, candlelight and Right. The sestet rhymes use, lose and choose with faith, breath and death, where faith is a near rhyme.

SoundCapitalized abstract words, “Being,” “Ideal Grace,” “Right” and “Praise” (lines 4, 7 and 8), give the octave a formal, almost prayerful weight. In lines 12–13 the dashes and the exclamation “all my life!” break the calm and let emotion through.

StructureThe octave moves from the heights of the soul (lines 2–4) to everyday life (lines 5–6) to moral ideals (lines 7–8). The sestet turns to the speaker’s past (lines 9–12) and then to the future after death (lines 13–14).

Line by line what each part says and does

1

Lines 1–4

Depth and breadth and height

The speaker asks how she loves and offers to count the ways. The first way is total: she loves to the full depth, breadth and height her soul can reach when it strains, beyond sight, toward the ends of existence and divine grace.

How it worksThe question is answered at once, and the answer begins at the largest scale possible. Love is measured like space in three dimensions, then linked to the soul’s search for God.
2

Lines 5–8

Everyday need, Right and Praise

She also loves at the level of the quietest everyday needs, by sun and by candlelight. She loves freely, as people strive for what is right, and purely, as they turn away from praise.

How it worksAfter the soul’s heights, the poem comes down to ordinary days and nights. The two similes in lines 7–8 compare her love to moral choices: it is given freely and asks for no reward.
3

Lines 9–11

Old griefs and childhood faith

She loves with the passion she once put into old griefs, and with the faith she had as a child. She loves with a love she seemed to lose.

How it worksThe sestet turns to her past. Feelings once spent on sorrow, the faith of her childhood and a love she thought she had lost are now redirected into this love, which suggests that love has restored her.
4

Lines 12–14

After death

That lost love went with her “lost saints,” but now she loves with the breath, smiles and tears of her whole life. If God chooses, she will love even better after death.

How it worksThe list breaks into dashes and an exclamation, then settles into a final promise. The last line extends love beyond life, with a humble condition, “if God choose.”

The turn

Lines 13

The anaphora runs straight across the usual octave and sestet break, so line 9 is not a sharp turn. The real shift comes midway through line 13, at “and, if God choose.” Every earlier way of loving belongs to the present or the past; the last line looks ahead to a love that continues, and even grows, after death.

Literary devices with line numbers

Rhetorical question

Line 1 asks “How do I love thee?” and answers at once, “Let me count the ways.” The question organizes the whole poem as a list of answers.

Anaphora

“I love thee” begins lines 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 11, and returns in the middle of line 12. The repetition makes the poem sound like a litany, a prayer of repeated phrases, and each return adds a new measure of love.

Metaphor

Lines 2–4 measure love by “the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach.” Love becomes a space the soul fills in every direction, as far as it can stretch toward “Being and Ideal Grace.”

Simile

Line 7 says “I love thee freely, as men strive for Right,” and line 8 says “I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.” The comparisons tie her love to moral action: it is chosen, not forced, and it seeks no credit.

Polysyndeton

In line 2, “the depth and breadth and height” links three nouns with repeated “and.” The slow build makes the dimensions of love feel as if they keep expanding.

Caesura

Lines 12 and 13 are broken by dashes and an exclamation mark, as in “Smiles, tears, of all my life!” After eleven orderly lines, the interruptions let strong feeling break into the list.

Themes in How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

The fullness of loveLove and faithLove that restores the pastLove beyond death

The fullness of love

The speaker’s love reaches the greatest heights of the soul (lines 2–4) and the smallest daily needs (lines 5–6). No part of life is left out.

Love and faith

The poem speaks of love in religious terms: “Ideal Grace” (line 4), “childhood’s faith” (line 10), “saints” (line 12) and God (line 13). Love here is close to worship.

Love that restores the past

Passion once spent on “old griefs” (line 10) and a love she “seemed to lose” (line 11) are taken up into this new love. It gives purpose back to what grief and loss had used up.

Love beyond death

The last line claims love will not end at death but grow “better after death” (line 14), a hope rooted in Christian belief in an afterlife.

Images and symbols

Sun and candlelight (line 6)

Day and night together stand for every hour of ordinary life. Love is present in the quiet routine of both.

Lost saints (line 12)

The poem does not say who they are. Readers take them as people she once revered and lost, perhaps to death, or as a faith that faded. Either way, the love she lost with them has returned.

Tensions

Past loss vs. present love. The speaker’s old griefs and lost saints (lines 10–12) stand behind the poem. The sonnet resolves the tension by turning the energy of loss into the strength of her love.

The ending

How How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) ends, explained

After twelve lines of present-tense love, the sonnet ends by looking beyond life: “and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death.” The phrase “if God choose” matters. The speaker does not command the future; she leaves it to God, which fits the religious language of the whole poem, from “Ideal Grace” in line 4 to the “saints” of line 12. The word “but” here means “only” or “simply,” so the line says she will simply love even better after death. The ending has a buildup behind it. Line 12 and the start of line 13 break into dashes and an exclamation, “Smiles, tears, of all my life!”, as the speaker gathers her whole existence into one measure. Then the final line returns to calm, even iambic rhythm, as if the storm of feeling has settled into certainty. Readers take the ending in a few ways. Many read it as a Christian hope that love will be perfected in heaven. Others note that the speaker has already described a love she “seemed to lose” and found again (line 11), so the last line extends that pattern: love survives loss, and even death may not end it. Some also hear the poem’s hardest claim here, that earthly love is not the fullest form love can take.

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

Line 1. The famous opening. The question is answered at once with a plan, and the rest of the poem is the counting.

“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach,”

Lines 2–3. The first and largest measure: love fills every dimension the soul can stretch to.

“I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; / I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;”

Lines 7–8. Paired similes that make love a moral choice: freely given and seeking no reward.

“and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death.”

Lines 13–14. The close carries love past the grave, with a humble condition that leaves the outcome to God.

Common misreadings

Myth“Sonnet 43” is one of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

ActuallyIt is by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, from her sequence Sonnets from the Portuguese. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43 is a different poem. The number refers to its place in her sequence.

MythThe poem was translated from Portuguese.

ActuallyElizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it in English. The title of the sequence presents the sonnets as if they were translations, which readers usually explain as a way of veiling how personal they were.

MythIt is a light, simple list of romantic feelings.

ActuallyThe poem measures love in the language of the soul, justice and faith, and it draws on “old griefs” (line 10), “lost saints” (line 12) and death (line 14). Its calm surface rests on loss and religious hope.

AP practice a poetry prompt in the exam's style

In “How Do I Love Thee?” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s speaker answers her own question by counting the ways she loves. Read the poem carefully, then write an essay that analyzes how Barrett Browning uses literary elements and techniques to convey a complex perspective on love.

What a strong response notices

The rhetorical question in line 1 and the anaphora of “I love thee” in lines 2–12.
The spatial metaphor of lines 2–4 and its religious and philosophical terms.
The movement from the soul’s heights (lines 2–4) to everyday life (lines 5–6) and moral ideals (lines 7–8).
The turn to the speaker’s past in lines 9–12: old griefs, childhood faith and lost saints.
The dashes and exclamation of lines 12–13 and the conditional promise of lines 13–14.

Practice prompt written by StoryBites, not taken from a College Board exam. See the AP Literature free-response guide for how answers are scored.

Test yourself

1. What does the speaker offer to do in line 1?

2. Which sequence does this sonnet come from?

3. How does the speaker love “purely,” according to line 8?

4. Why is the poem numbered 43 in most books but 42 in the 1850 edition?

5. What does the speaker say about love after death?

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Answer

Explain it like I’m 12

The poet asks herself how much she loves someone, then lists the ways. She loves him as deep and high as her soul can go. She loves him in small, everyday ways, day and night. She loves him the way good people choose to do what is right, without wanting praise. All the strong feelings she once had about sad things and childhood faith now go into this love. She even says that if God allows it, she will love him more after she dies.

Compare & connect

Sonnet 116

William Shakespeare

Another famous sonnet that defines love, here as something that does not change with time. Shakespeare says what love is not; Barrett Browning counts what her love is.

Remember

Christina Rossetti

A Victorian sonnet by a woman that also imagines love after death, but Rossetti’s speaker tells the beloved it is better to forget and smile than to remember and be sad.

My Last Duchess

Robert Browning

By the man she married. His Duke talks about a wife he could not control, a chilling contrast to her open, freely given love.

Discussion and essay prompts:

💬 Discussion questions

What is How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning about
Who is How Do I Love Thee written to
Why is it called Sonnets from the Portuguese
How does How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) explore the theme of the fullness of love?
How does How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) explore the theme of love and faith?
What is the central conflict in How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43), and how does it shape the ending?

✎ Essay prompts

Analyze how Elizabeth Barrett Browning develops the theme of the fullness of love in How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43). Support your argument with specific evidence from the text.
Examine the significance of sun and candlelight (line 6) in How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43). What does it represent, and how does it deepen the work’s meaning?
How does Elizabeth Barrett Browning use rhetorical question to shape the reader’s experience of How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)?
Some readers assume that “Sonnet 43” is one of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Argue for or against this interpretation, using evidence from the text.

Key questions students ask

What is How Do I Love Thee by Elizabeth Barrett Browning about
Who is How Do I Love Thee written to
Why is it called Sonnets from the Portuguese
What is the rhyme scheme of How Do I Love Thee
What does I shall but love thee better after death mean
Is How Do I Love Thee Sonnet 43 or Sonnet 42

Analysis is original StoryBites commentary. The poem is printed from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poems (London: Chapman & Hall, 1850), volume II, where it is numbered XLII, checked line by line against the page image of that printing. It is in the public domain.