How Do I Love Thee by E. B. Browning Summery theme tone Total analysis

Introduction to Poetry & Reading Skills.

Poem: How Do I Love Thee
Writer: 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 candle-light.

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

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.

★★★Theme:
The theme of a work is not its subject buts its central ideas which may be stated directly or in an implied from. In short, Theme is central idea in a piece of writing. The whole body explains the theme.

★★★The theme of the poem is Love or How much the poet, E.B. Browning, loves her husband.

★★★Rhyme scheme:
Rhyme means a word that has the same sound or ends with the same sound as another word. Generally, it means the recurrence of similar sounds in the closing syllabus of different verses. There are end rhyme, internal rhyme, masculine rhyme feminine rhyme and trisyllabic rhyme.

★★★The Rhyme scheme of the poem is abba abba cd cd cd.

★★★Author's position'
Author's position is the situation or condition in which he or she exists. Their position includes their beliefs, disbeliefs,biasness, disinterest and assumption of them.
★The Author's position of the poem is Objective.

★★★Tone:
Tones means the attitude the poet takes towards a theme or a subject. Like the manner of a person the manner of a poem be friendly, or a combatant towards its reader. Again, the tone of a poem may tell one how the speaker feels about himself or herself, cocksure or humble, sad or glad.

★The Tone of the poem is affectionate, earnest, sincere, confident and optimistic.

★★★ Figures of speech:

★Anaphora: "I Love Thee".
Metaphor: " Sun and Candle light".
Simile: As Men strive for right", I love purely, As they turn from praise".

★Hyperbole: "I Love Thee to Thee depth and breadth and height".
My soul can reach...".

★★★ Summary: In the poem the poet uses some unconventional images to express love for her lover. She first ask to herself: How Do I Love Thee? Then She answers proceeding to four the ways of her love. Her love is spiritual, immeasurable and unconventional, mingled with abstract and concrete images. In terms of everyday experience she reveals love for her lover. A man cannot live without the thing he needs everyday. The poet also cannot lead a single day without her lover. Again to her, the lover is as important as the right to the people. She loves him genuinely and expects no praise in return. She further says her passion for him Is as intense as her old suffering and childhood faith. She hopes to love her lover more passionately in the next world if God chooses.

★★★Stanza:
The combinations of the lines that from the divisions are called stanzas. A stanza may from with two sentences or three or four sentences. The Division are given below:
*Triplet, *Quarantine, *Quintette, *Sextains, *Septet or Chaucerian stanza, *Octet/Triolet, *Nonet

★★★Stanza: As usual in a Petrachan sonnet the metre is iambic pentameter, with some variations which break the dead monotony of the rhythm.

★★★Imagery:(The collective use of images).

" To death and breadth and height/My soul can reach".
"Candle light", " Sun and Candle light", I Love the freely, as men strive for right", "Ends of being and ideal grace", " As they turn praise",

★★★Mysticism: "Old griefs", " Childhood faith", "lost saints".

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©Rohomot Ali