How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

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.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning – (1806-1861)

বাংলা সামারিঃ
প্রেম হল কোমল অনুভূতি এবং অন্যের জন্য একটি আত্মিক অনুভূতির নাম যা কবি অনুভব করেন। এটা কোন জাগতিক পরিমাপক যন্ত্র বা মাত্রা দ্বারা পরিমাপ করা যায় না। এখানে স্পিকার বলেছেন কিভাবে সে তার প্রিয়জনকে ভালবাসে এবং বিভিন্ন উপায়ে তিনি তার ভালবাসার তালিকা করার চেষ্টা করেছেন। এই সনেট স্বামীর প্রতি কবির তীব্র ভালোবাসা প্রকাশ করে। তিনি বলেন, তার প্রতি তার ভালোবাসা এতটাই তীব্র যে এটি আধ্যাত্মিক স্তর পর্যন্ত পৌঁছে যেতে সক্ষম। তিনি তাকে স্বতঃস্ফূর্তভাবে ভালবাসেন, জবরদস্তি ছাড়াই ভালবাসেন; তিনি ব্যক্তিগত লাভের প্রত্যাশা ছাড়াই তাকে বিশুদ্ধভাবে ভালবাসেন। এমনকি তিনি তাকে ক্রুশে থাকা খ্রীষ্টের মতো কষ্টের তীব্রতার সাথে ভালবাসেন এবং তিনি তাকে সেইভাবে ভালোবাসেন যেভাবে তিনি শিশু হিসাবে সাধুদের ভালোবাসতেন। তদুপরি, তিনি মৃত্যুর পরেও তাকে ভালবাসা অব্যাহত রাখবেন বলে আশা করেন।

👉Summary:
Love is the name of tender feeling and a feeling soul for another that the poet feels. It cannot be measured by any worldly equilibrium or earthly balanced or dimension. The speaker asks how she loves her beloved and tries to list the different ways in which she loves him. This sonnet expresses the poet’s intense love for her husband. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level (lines 3 and 4). She loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. She even loves him with an intensity of the suffering (passion: line 9) resembling that of Christ on the cross, and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Moreover, she expects to continue to love him after death.

👉Poet’s Position, Attitude & Tone
The position of the poet in the above poem is objective. The sonnet is written in a way that the ‘I’ speaker does not reveal anything about the writer. We can hardly assume the identity and gender of the lover and the beloved.

The theme of the poem is genuine love that is universal. The first person speaker ‘I’ uses some unconventional images to express his or her sincere love. The speaker elucidates that his or her love is spiritual and immeasurable. The speaker’s love is unconventional, blend with abstract and concrete images. This type of love is applicable for all irrespective of gender and space. So, the poem is objective.

The tone of the poem is affectionate, sincere, deep, earnest, optimistic and confident. As the poem progresses, the speaker’s perspective narrows or even “comes down to earth” a little, shifting from its most religious tone to a focus on more apparently secular human interests and becomes passionate. Then it shifts to a more serious tone. She shows he aggressive determination to love her beloved more passionately in the next world.

👉Scansion

👉Figure of Speech :
This is a beautiful sonnet dealing with love theme. It is technically Petrarchan or Italian. Many figures of speech are employed in this sonnet. Personification, metonymy, and synecdoche. alliteration, anaphora, caesura and assonance are mentionable.

In this sonnet the poet uses a lot of hyperboles, exaggeration. The hyperboles used are showing intense love and emotion for her partner. One of the hyperboles are “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach.” When she says this means that she loves her man as much as she can, and that she can love him for a far distance, using depth. “I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life! -and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” The poet is trying to say that she’ll die for him because she said he takes her breath