Elizabeth Barret Browning; "How Do I Love Thee"

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 everyday'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 a 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 Barret Browning, from "Sonnets of the Portuguese"

 

I have tried to love this poem. Yet with every passing year, I believe that such  unremarkable forays of the Victorian era belong in the "Stuffed Owl" anthologies of "good-bad" verse, or worse, because of the cliched nature of the piece, perhaps no longer belongs in the anthologies. Seventh graders may teethe on such simple sonnets, yet even they deserve to know and believe that the world of verse can convey more than the curse of mediocrity and revisited tropes.

 

"How do I love thee -- let me count the ways."

 

When a verse of poetry conjures up "love", "counting" no longer counts, and an itemized list to commemorate the sentiment is just a senseless attempt at best to appeal to the senses.

 

"Count the ways" -- the way to love? If one is so in love, then one's whole view on the matter, love or not, is just too great to be itemized or analyzed.

 

What kind of love are we encountering here? Less like Romeo and Juliet, more like the self-important parson of Pride and Prejudice.

 

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.

 

The depths and breadhts and height -- is this an appeal to the Third Chapter of Ephesians? The reference is lacking, as is the vacuous reference to expansion. "Soul" carries no body, yet "feeling out of sight" wars with no effect against this apparent failing. "My soul can reach" -- the poet is grappling for terms to express the extreme desire, yet to what effect? Her compression of thought dissipates in the same words which any run-of-the-mill suitor would employ, and "employ" best describes this adequate, and thus inadequate appraisal, as "employees" put in their time, then go home as fast as they can, having done just enough. Yet a poem should do more, and Ms. Barret's poem fails right away for communicating "just enough".

 

"Ends of being" --- being what? "Ideal grace "means nothing", a graceless turn for the worse in reducing grace to a mere word, sacrilege with no form.

 

I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

 

The "thee" does not impress or impose a sense of archaic charm. "Thee" suggests the empty coat on a stick, which in "Sailing for Byzantium" contains life in its innate emptiness. Here, the "thee" says nothing but effort to impress, and thus does not.

 

"The level of everydays's most quiet need" -- why is the need "quiet"? The fusion of initially irreconcilable elements is acceptable, to the extent that the imagery, the demand for resolution, engages the inner life of the reader. "Quiet need" here, though, is quiet of any need for response, as the two terms are so broad in their implications, that the meeting of the two ideas remains nothing more than the two words in the verse. "Sun and candle-light" contains another image which clashes instead of flashes, in which the brilliance is dimmed instead of manifest. What happens to candle-light in the presence of the sun? It is weakened to the point of darkness. Sadly, Ms. Browning's musings are so broad as to darken as opposed to enlighten the reader's intellect.

I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

"I love thee purely" -- this ambiguity confesses weakness,not worthiness, of thought. How does one love "purely", and what does it have to do with "Praise"? A passion put to use, a bathetic sentiment, for "passion" indicates a drive deeper than trying to accomplish something. Old griefs mixing with childhood's faith, another conceit which concedes defeat. "Use" and "faith" do not mix, no more than men and woman walking in the Spirit do not resort to the rules on how to live, no more than an artist consults a "how-to" book when he paints a portrait. His skill, the tools, and the scene he wishes to depict are all that the artist needs.

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.

"I love thee with a love" is a confusing statement, to love someone with a love -- how else would I love someone, then? To treat love as an action and also as a thing, just depresses all convention. Love must be  more than a mere "something" if this love so moved the poet to write about it.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,

She lost this love with all her lost saints? Saints, whether infering the Biblical or the Catholic understanding, do not get lost, nor can they be lost, for they are saved, and it would appear that Ms. Browning must be saved from the morass of mixed metaphors A saint that is lost makes as much sense as a madman claiming his own dementia, clearly conflicted by his own words and walk, and obviously a man who is merely repeating what someone else has told him to say.

I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!

Is that all? She conveys a sense of complete and utter love, yet "breath, smiles, tears" are all conventional fare, which one would just as well find in the cell of a celibate nun in a convent. This poet is still alive, or at least breathing, so for her to assume "all her breath, smiles, and tears" is both lazy and hazy in its articulation. What are smiles, what are tears when compared to life itself? The poet needed to present a grander, unique vision. Once again, the candle-light dims inexorably in the face of the sun, except the rays of the sun that shine through the window are brighter still than any light or insight which I or any other reader would have gathered from this poem.

and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

From bathos to arrogance to complete ignorance, she lets God choose, yet she still believes that she can love. The words can mean so much more, yet with her verse, they end up meaning less and less. "Love the better after death" indeed she may, if she stops writing and starts being.

Ms. Barret Browning, and other poets whose work contains more than compels, communicate the bare elements of what poems, sonnets in particular, can be and do. She does so little with so grand a potential, and the examples, the images that she conjures up take away rather than impart a greater impact.

After reading so bland a poem, the school-yard sweet-heart in the seventh-grade English class should feel moved to do better.