Sonnet 42

Born in 1806 in England,

“How Do I Love

sugarcane plantations in Jamaica .

Thee?”

After a secret courtship, she married the successful British poet Robert Browning in 1846.

Her sonnet uses the Italian

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.

She uses assonance with “depth” and “breadth”; “reach” and “feeling”; and, format with a rhyming pattern of an octet and sestet making up the 14 lines.

“being” and “ideal” for overall euphonious effect.

She repeats “I love thee” to emphasize her feelings.

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.

She uses a simile to compare her love to the acts of noble men.

She uses sound devices, such as alliteration, to add an elegant nature of the poem.

I love theee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith; I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

An invalid and six years older than Robert Browning, she doubted his love for her.

With the dash, she With my lost saints, —I love thee with

the breath, God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

emphasizes her feelings, breaking up the formality She died in 1861, in her husband’s arms. Browning said she died “smilingly, Much of her poetry has religious themes, after being inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if with the face of a girl’s”. Her last word was—”Beautiful”.