"How Do I Love Thee?"; Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Writer Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on this day in 1806. Her "Sonnets from the Portugese" (from which "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways" is taken) is viewed as one of the greatest sonnet sequences ever written

British Museum

‘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.’

Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born ‪#‎onthisday‬ in 1806. This extract is from her best known work, ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’, a collection of love sonnets dedicated to her husband Robert Browning http://ow.ly/Z438M

Everyman's Library

British poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in Kelloe, Durham, England on this day in 1806.

"How Do I Love Thee?" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.
I love thee to the level of every day'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 with a passion put to use
In 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.

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Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning are without parallel in the nineteenth century: celebrated poets, they became equally famous for their marriage. Still popular more than a century after their deaths, their poetry vividly reflects the unique nature of their relationship. This collection presents the Brownings’ work in the context of their lives: the early years and their initial friendship, their courtship and marriage, the fifteen happy years they spent living in Italy until Elizabeth’s death. Whether in short poems such as Elizabeth’s “Hector in the Garden” and Robert’s “Natural Magic,” or in extracts from longer works such as Aurora Leigh and Pauline, the great themes they shared are all represented: love, marriage, illicit passion, England and Italy, childhood, religion, poetry, and nature. Elizabeth’s famous Sonnets from the Portuguese, based on their love affair, is included in its entirety. The poems are augmented with a generous selection of the marvelous letters the Brownings wrote to each other.

Vintage Books & Anchor Books

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"Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore—
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two."
--from Sonnets from the Portuguese Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was born 210 years ago on this day in 1806.

First published in 1850 and considered some of the finest love lyrics in the English language, Sonnets from the Portuguese comprise 44 interlocking poems that Elizabeth Barrett Browning composed for her husband, Robert Browning.