Emily Scheiber
Draft Paper Analysis
Summary:
Sonnet expresses the poet's intense love for her husband to be, Robert Browning. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level, saying “my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight” (line 3). 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, saying “in my old griefs…” (line 10) resembling that of Christ of the cross, and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Also, she expects to continue to love him after death, “I shall but love thee after death” (Line 14)
Technique and style:
Rhyme scheme- Lines 1 to 8: ABBA, ABBA; Lines 9 to 14: CD, CD, CD
In iambic pentameter
Uses anaphora (use of “I love thee” in eight lines)
Point of view is first person
Shift in line 14 from present tense to future tense (“I love thee” to “I shall but love thee”)
Criticism on the poem:
Not many criticized the poem, many loved it.
Personal response:
This poem focuses on love. This is how Elizabeth describes and expresses her special feelings or her love to her special someone. Like the first line, which is, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”. It means that there are many ways on how can you show your love to others. The other one is, “I love thee to the level of every days”. There is also “Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight”. It means that she will keep on loving someone even day or night, even there is no light. And the part that is most intense is, “I shall but love thee better after death”. This means that she will love this person forever until the end of her life.