Difficulty: Beginner–Intermediate | Prerequisites: Expressive Poetry Analysis Techniques notes
Sonnet 43 is the most famous poem in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sequence Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). It is a Petrarchan sonnet in which the speaker catalogues the ways she loves her beloved, measuring love against physical space, spiritual aspiration, everyday life, and mortality. This is a standard set-text for expressive poetry units because it demonstrates nearly every analysis category (diction, imagery, devices, tone, structure) in a short, self-contained form. You should have the analysis techniques notes to hand before working through this.
Sonnet 43 is a love poem in which the speaker measures her love by comparing it to physical space, spiritual striving, everyday constancy, and even death. It is a Petrarchan sonnet in iambic pentameter with an ABBAABBA octave and a CDCDCD sestet. For analysis purposes, it is a clean example of repetition, spatial metaphor, sensory imagery, and a sincere, reverent tone.
Sonnet 43 / "How Do I Love Thee?"
The 43rd poem in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, published 1850. The opening line, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," is one of the most recognised lines in English poetry.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Victorian poet (1806-1861). Wrote the Sonnets from the Portuguese sequence during her courtship with Robert Browning. The title is slightly misleading: they are not translations from Portuguese but original English poems. "Portuguese" was Robert's pet name for Elizabeth.
Sonnets from the Portuguese
A sequence of 44 love sonnets tracing the development of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's love for Robert Browning. Sonnet 43 is the penultimate poem and serves as the emotional climax of the sequence.
Transcendent love
Love that goes beyond the physical or material world. In Sonnet 43, the speaker describes a love that extends past "Being and ideal grace," past everyday needs, and even past death itself.
In simple terms, transcendent love is love that nothing, not even dying, can stop.
Volta
The "turn" in a sonnet where the argument, tone, or perspective shifts. In a Petrarchan sonnet, the volta typically falls between the octave and the sestet (between lines 8 and 9). In Sonnet 43, the volta marks a shift from measuring love spatially to measuring it through lived experience and passion.
The poem's vocabulary centres on words of measurement and dimension: "depth," "breadth," "height." These are concrete, spatial words applied to an abstract emotion, which immediately signals that the speaker is using metaphor.
"Pure" and "passion" carry strong connotations. "Pure" implies love without self-interest; "passion" implies intensity that borders on suffering (the Latin root passio means suffering).
"Grief" and "tears" introduce sorrow into what is otherwise an ecstatic love poem. This diction choice gives the love weight and realism.
The closing line, "I shall but love thee better after death," uses plain, monosyllabic words for maximum directness. No ornamentation, just a calm declaration.
Visual and spatial imagery dominates. "The depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach" asks the reader to picture love as a three-dimensional space stretching to the limits of the soul.
"Feeling out of sight" evokes the intangible, something the eye cannot see but the heart recognises. It creates an image of reaching beyond the visible world.
"Sun and candle-light" is sensory imagery (sight, warmth) representing constancy. Sunlight is public and grand; candlelight is private and intimate. Together they cover the full span of daily life.
The poem does not use much auditory, olfactory, or gustatory imagery. It relies almost entirely on spatial and visual registers, which suits a poem about the scale of an emotion rather than its sensory texture.
Repetition / anaphora: "I love thee" is repeated throughout the poem. Each repetition introduces a new dimension of love, building a cumulative catalogue. The device reinforces sincerity: the speaker keeps returning to the same declaration because no single expression is sufficient.
Metaphor: Love is compared to physical space ("depth, breadth, height"), to spiritual striving ("the ends of being and ideal grace"), and to the rhythms of daily life ("sun and candle-light"). None of these comparisons use "like" or "as," so they are metaphors, not similes.
Hyperbole: "I shall but love thee better after death" is a form of hyperbole. It claims love will outlast mortality, which is literally impossible but emotionally resonant.
Enjambment: Several lines run over without a pause (e.g. "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach"), which creates a sense of love overflowing the line's boundaries, just as the emotion overflows any single measure.
Tone: Sincere, reverent, quietly passionate. The speaker is earnest throughout. There is no irony, no playfulness, no doubt. Words like "freely," "purely," "passion" reinforce this.
Mood: The overall atmosphere is one of tender solemnity. The love described is so vast and so serious that the poem feels almost devotional, closer to prayer than to casual affection.
The mention of "grief" and "childhood's faith" adds a layer of bittersweet retrospection. The mood is warm but aware of loss and mortality.
The tone does not shift dramatically at the volta. Instead, it deepens: the sestet moves from spatial measurement to lived experience and then to death, so the tone becomes more intimate and more grave.
Form: Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet. 14 lines divided into an octave (lines 1-8) and a sestet (lines 9-14).
Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA in the octave. The sestet uses CDCDCD (some editions show minor variations).
Metre: Iambic pentameter throughout. The regular rhythm gives the poem a measured, deliberate quality that matches the speaker's careful cataloguing.
Octave content: The speaker measures love through spatial metaphor (depth, breadth, height), spiritual aspiration ("Being and ideal grace"), and the invisible realm ("feeling out of sight").
Sestet content: The speaker shifts to lived experience ("freely," "purely," "passion put to use"), personal history ("my old griefs," "my childhood's faith"), and finally transcendence of death.
Volta: The turn at line 9 moves from abstract measurement to concrete, personal experience. This is the structural heart of the poem's argument: love is not only vast in theory but woven into every aspect of life.
The poem's central claim is that love is measurable, but every measure turns out to be infinite. Each "way" the speaker counts reveals another dimension of love that exceeds ordinary boundaries.
Love in this poem is spiritual, moral, and physical simultaneously. It reaches toward God ("ideal grace"), it sustains daily life ("sun and candle-light"), and it survives death.
The poem can also be read as an argument about the inadequacy of language. The opening question ("How do I love thee?") promises an answer, but the catalogue that follows keeps expanding without ever arriving at a final sum.
An alternative reading notes the poem's context within the Sonnets from the Portuguese sequence. Written during a courtship conducted largely through letters, Sonnet 43 can be read as a letter-writer's attempt to make language do the work of physical presence.
Students often refer to the speaker as "he." The speaker of Sonnet 43 is female (Elizabeth Barrett Browning writing to Robert Browning). The graphic organiser source for this unit uses "his" throughout, which is incorrect.
Students sometimes call this a "Shakespearean sonnet" because it is written in English. The form is Petrarchan (ABBAABBA octave, not ABAB quatrains). The language is English, but the structure is Italian.
Students often write "the poet creates imagery" without specifying which sense the imagery appeals to. In Sonnet 43, the dominant imagery is visual and spatial. Saying so is more precise and more useful.
The phrase "I shall but love thee better after death" is sometimes read as morbid. It is better understood as hyperbolic: the speaker is expressing love so strong that even death cannot diminish it. The tone is triumphant, not grim.
The rubric for this unit has three graded components: the graphic organiser (25 points), the magazine paragraph (20 points), and grammar/mechanics (5 points). Total: 50 points.
The graphic organiser requires complete sentences and in-depth analysis with evidence. "In-depth" means you connect the device to its effect, not just name it.
The magazine paragraph must be 5-7 sentences with supporting evidence (direct quotes from the poem). Choose the magazine that best matches the poem's tone and theme, and explain why with specific references.
Grammar and mechanics are worth 5 points. Spell "Petrarchan" and "iambic pentameter" correctly. Proofread for run-on sentences.
The "On Target" tier (top marks) specifically requires that the analysis be "in-depth with evidence." Evidence means quoting words or phrases from the poem, not paraphrasing.
Fill in the blank: Sonnet 43 is a ________ sonnet with an octave rhyming ABBAABBA.
Petrarchan (or Italian).
True or false: The speaker of Sonnet 43 is male.
False. The speaker is Elizabeth Barrett Browning, writing to Robert Browning.
Fill in the blank: "Sun and candle-light" is an example of ________ imagery.
Visual (and tactile/warmth). Both answers are acceptable.
True or false: "I shall but love thee better after death" is an example of literal language.
False. It is hyperbole.
Fill in the blank: The turn between the octave and the sestet in a sonnet is called the ________.
Volta.
Q: How does the repetition of "I love thee" contribute to the poem's meaning?
A: Each repetition introduces a new measure of love (spatial, spiritual, everyday, passionate, beyond death), so the cumulative effect is a sense of love that exceeds any single definition. The repetition also mirrors the speaker's attempt to "count the ways," reinforcing the poem's central conceit that love is at once countable and infinite.
Q: Identify two examples of imagery in Sonnet 43 and explain what sense each appeals to.
A: "The depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach" appeals to spatial/visual sense, asking the reader to picture love as a three-dimensional expanse. "Sun and candle-light" appeals to sight and warmth, evoking the constancy of love across public (daylight) and private (candlelight) settings.
Q: What is the effect of the volta in Sonnet 43?
A: The volta marks a shift from abstract, spatial measurement (octave) to concrete, personal experience (sestet). In the sestet, the speaker describes loving "freely," "purely," and with "passion," grounding the earlier metaphors in real emotional life. This shift makes the love feel both grand and lived-in.
Q: Why would Sonnet 43 be a good fit for a magazine about love and romance?
A: The poem celebrates love as deep, pure, all-encompassing, and eternal. Its imagery ("sun and candle-light," "depth and breadth and height") is vivid and emotionally accessible. Its message, that love transcends everyday life and even death, resonates with readers who value romantic idealism. These qualities align with a magazine whose audience reads for the beauty and power of love.
Q: A student writes: "This poem is about love because it says 'I love thee' a lot." How could this analysis be improved?
A: The student has identified the subject (love) and a device (repetition) but has not analysed how the repetition works. A stronger answer would note that each repetition adds a new dimension (spatial, spiritual, daily, passionate, eternal), so the effect is cumulative rather than redundant. The student should also quote specific phrases and explain what they reveal about the nature of the love described.
Sonnet 43 sits within the broader study of Victorian poetry. Barrett Browning was writing during a period when women poets were gaining serious literary recognition, and the Sonnets from the Portuguese sequence is often taught alongside the work of Christina Rossetti and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The Petrarchan sonnet form connects to the Renaissance and the Italian literary tradition. Understanding how Barrett Browning adopted and adapted a 14th-century Italian form for a 19th-century English love poem is useful context for any Periods in English Literature course.
The analytical skills practised here (close reading for diction, imagery, devices, structure) apply directly to prose fiction analysis. The same question, "Why did the writer choose this word, this image, this structure?", works for a novel as well as a sonnet.
Sonnet 43, How Do I Love Thee, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, Petrarchan sonnet, Italian sonnet, Victorian poetry, love poetry, expressive poetry, iambic pentameter, octave, sestet, volta, rhyme scheme, ABBAABBA, CDCDCD, repetition, anaphora, metaphor, spatial metaphor, imagery, sensory imagery, tone, mood, transcendent love, spiritual love, poetry analysis, close reading, graphic organiser, Florida Virtual School, Periods in English Literature, ENG