Sonnet · Love

How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning · 1850

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.

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“How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning — quilloak.com/poems/how-do-i-love-thee

Quick facts

Poem: How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
Poet: Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Published: 1850
Length: 14 lines
Form: Sonnet
Themes: Love, For Him, For Her

Craft notes

How this poem works

Measured from the text on this page, not copied from a summary. Counts are approximate: syllables and rhymes come from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, which models General American English, so dialect, older pronunciation, and performance can all change what you hear.

Shape: 14 lines · one 14-line stanza
Line length: Mostly 10-syllable lines (pentameter length).

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Text, source & rights

A traceable edition

Full-text display is based on a United States term-expiry review; status can differ elsewhere.

Author record: Elizabeth Barrett Browning1806–1861
Source record: QuillOak curated editionHow Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43) (1850) by elizabeth-barrett-browning
Display decision: Full text · United States · reviewed 2026-07-18
Publication record: 1850
Text fingerprint: SHA-256 70b2e0932a1bb72d…
Editorial handling: Whitespace and stanza breaks normalized for web display; no material wording change recorded.

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About How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

Published in 1850 as Sonnet 43 of Sonnets from the Portuguese, this is a Petrarchan sonnet: an octave rhymed ABBAABBA and a sestet, in iambic pentameter. The title Elizabeth Barrett Browning chose was a gentle disguise — the sequence pretended to translate foreign sonnets, partly to veil how directly it spoke to Robert Browning during their courtship, before her marriage against her father's will. "My little Portuguese" was his pet name for her.

The poem's engine is measurement: it tries to count what cannot be counted. Love is sounded by dimension (depth, breadth, height), then by daily scale ("the level of every day's most quiet need"), then by moral quality (freely, purely), and finally by biography — old griefs, childhood's faith, lost saints. The accumulating anaphora of "I love thee" turns a list into a rising incantation, and the sestet's gamble is that love will not end with breath but increase "after death."

Its honesty about scale is why it endures at weddings and anniversaries: it promises both the ideal grace and the candle-light. Discussion questions: Which measurement feels most believable to you? What changes if you read the "lost saints" as people rather than faith? Try writing three lines that measure one of your own attachments without using the word love.

Sonnet Love For Him For Her

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