Elizabeth Barrett Browning

651 Words2 Pages

“How Do I Love Thee?”( Sonnet 43) Elizabeth Barrett Browning is considered a great poet because of her sonnets and her love story between her and her husband.Browning was born on March 6,1806 in the United Kingdom and died in Florence, Italy on June 29, 1861. Browning started writing since age 6, her childhood was full of poems that her mother always kept.When entering adolescence, at age 15 Elizabeth got really ill, she suffered from spinal pain and later developed tuberculosis.Although Browning had many health problems she managed to write her sonnets that are what keep her remembered till today, such as “ How do i love thee”, and “Aurora Leigh”. Browning had an spiritual influence due to the fact that the majority of her sonnets have a religious …show more content…

I love thee to the level of every day’s”,(Ln2-4) this is a metaphor Browning used to explain the depth of her love to her husband, she loves every piece of him.The poem also has some symbolism, the writer uses “sun” to refer to the day or times of happiness, and “candle -light” as the night or times of sadness, and “thee” representing “Him” or the love she has for him. The poem’s tone is romantic, the first eight lines of the poem are happy and positive, readers can sense a loving and admiring attitude, but as the end approaches the poem shifts to a darker tone, the author starts using a depressive tone, “ 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” (Ln11-13), the poems shifted to a sad tone making the readers imagine the pain she must have experienced. My first impression of Browning’s poem was that it was going to be about an ordinary woman describing and listing the ways she loves her husband, but it goes deeper than that. Browning composed the poem in such an strict and passionate way, making it seem as if loving her husband was the only reason for her existence, this makes me extremely emotional, sometimes love can make us all about someone, causing us to lose sight of

Open Document