This is one of the world’s most famous love poems. “How do I love thee…” (Sonnet 43) is featured in the collection Sonnets from the Portuguese, a sequence of 44 sonnets (published 1850) by Elizabeth Barret Browning, who was a prominent Victorian poet.

Though she suffered lifelong illness, she married the poet and playwright Robert Browning, who was a major influence on her work, and to whom Sonnet 43 is addressed. Other famous examples of the sonnet sequence include Sir Philip Sydney’s Astrophil and Stella and Shakespeare’s sonnets.

This sonnet describes the poet’s passionate adoration for fellow poet and soon-to-be-husband Robert Browning.

Sonnets
A Sonnet is a poem which expresses a thought or idea and develops it, often cleverly and wittily. It is made up of 14 lines, each being 10 syllables long. Its rhymes are arranged according to one of the following schemes:

• Italian, where eight lines consisting of two quatrains make up the first section of the sonnet, called an octave. This will open the the poem with a question or an idea. It is followed by the next section of six lines called a sestet, that forms the ‘answer’ or a counter-view. This style of sonnet is also sometimes called a Petrarchan sonnet.

• English which comprises three quatrains, making twelve lines, followed by a rhyming couplet. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. Edmund Spenser’s sonnets are a variant.

At the break in the sonnet — in Italian after the first eight lines, in English after twelve lines — there is a ‘turn’ or volta, after which there will be a change or new perspective on the preceding idea.

Structure of “How do I love thee”
Although the poem is a sonnet it doesn’t follow strictly the formal template as described above. For example, it doesn’t end with the usual closed couplet, as with Shakespeare’s sonnets.

Rhyme Scheme
Elizabeth Browning chose a rhyme pattern that is broadly ABBA, ABBA, CDCDCD, although line ten doesn’t quite fit perfectly — she rhymes ‘faith’ with the consonant breath. Nonetheless this flexibility doesn’t jar. The looser structure gives a sense of freedom and flexibility not present in the more rigid template of English sonnets. The result is not so much inconsistent as complex and intriguing.

Language
The metre is iambic pentameter, stately and rhythmic, that conveys an impression of dignity and seriousness. Shakespeare’s sonnets follow this pattern. This sonnet is characterised by hypnotic repetition.

Note: for comparison see Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 which also deals with enduring love. For a modern poem (and description of love as precious and powerful but fleeting) see Carol Ann Duffy’s Hour. Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses one of Shakespeare’s ideas — that of love enduring beyond death — and recasts it for her own sonnet, a device known as intertextuality.