Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Poet:

• Victorian era
• Sick throughout her life
• Published at age of 15
• Very poriminant poet in UK and USA
• Married another famous poet - Robert Browning (originally a fan)
• Deeply relgious woman

Sonnet form: 

• (See Sonnet 116)
• First octave presents theme in the poem comparing love to religion 
• The final sestet - compares intensity between now and intensity in childhood

Context:

• One of her 44 sonnets to Robert Browning
• Romantic, whooing love

Language:

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

• 1st line - direct adress, hypophora, beginning engages reader, different ways she loves him, unquantifiable nature of love, exclamation mark shows that delights in the opportunity to explain her love for him 
  
• next three lines are much more complex
• 'I love thee to the depth and breadth and height' - sydetic listing, spacial metaphor, I love every part of you, very normal measurments for something that can't actually be measure (love), internal rhymn is used 'depth and breadth', rule of 3 shows the scale magnitutude and intesnity of love 
• 'soul' - mind and emotions of people, religious imagry
• 'Ideal Grace' - religious, heaven, redemtion, opposite to soul (this represents the spiritual part of her), the love she has for him is all encompassing, unifying love, spiritual salvation that love offers
• 'feeling out of sight' - blind faith, she doesn't really know what she's getting herself in to but she doesn't care because she loves him and trusts him 

I 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…