How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43): Important Quotes Explained

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

The speaker opens the sonnet with this line, which has since become hugely famous and continues to be quoted frequently. On a formal level, the line is split into two parts, which are separated by a strong mid-line paused known as a caesura (say-ZHOO-ruh). In the first part of the line, the speaker poses a rhetorical question: “How do I love thee?” Usually, rhetorical questions serve a dramatic effect and hence aren’t meant to be answered. Here, however, the speaker actually goes on to answer their question. But the question is still rhetorical in its basic function, which is simply to provide the speaker with an excuse to gush about how much they adore their beloved. In the second part of the line, the speaker sets up one of the key devices that will characterize the rest of the poem: enumeration. When announcing that they will “count the ways” they adore their beloved, the speaker prepares us to hear a list of different forms their love takes, and they implicitly invite us to count along with them.

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.

In lines 2–4, the speaker describes the dimensions of their love. However, these aren’t your typical dimensions. The speaker’s love has a “depth,” “breadth,” and “height” that cannot be mapped out with physical measurements. Instead, the speaker estimates the dimensions of this space in terms of how far their “soul can reach” as it extends itself to “the ends of being.” In this sense, the speaker is describing a metaphysical space—that is, a space that goes beyond normal, physical space. We can’t grasp the magnitude of this metaphysical space in any precise way. However, the sheer length of this three-line sentence gives us an intuitive understanding of how capacious such a space must be. Thus, the speaker’s love encompasses everything, even out to the furthest bounds of “ideal grace.”

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

In lines 12–13, the speaker cryptically references an experience of loss. It’s possible to interpret their description of “my lost saints” as a reference to loved ones the speaker has lost in their life. Losing such loved ones can cause profound grief that may initially feel permanent, but which softens with time. Hence why the speaker says they only “seemed to lose” this love. However, it’s also possible to interpret the speaker’s loss of their “saints” as symbolizing a moment of doubt in their faith. In religious traditions such as Christianity, a saint is an exalted figure who’s characterized primarily by their holy virtue. So closely are saints associated with their characteristic virtues that they become linked to certain areas of life. For example, the enormous intellectual gifts of Saint Thomas Aquinas make him the patron saint of learning. Losing one’s saints could therefore mean to lose faith in the holy virtues of faith that saints represent. If the speaker has indeed lost their faith, it was only temporary—the love for their beloved has restored the spiritual love they “seemed to lose / With [their] 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.

The speaker concludes the poem with these lines (12–14), where they reiterate just how far-reaching their love really is. In lines 2–4, the speaker described their love in terms of a capacious metaphysical space. Here, the speaker returns to the more-than-physical realm with their reference to God and the afterlife. However, the speaker also makes references that are less directly spiritual and instead more common and personal. They say their love is bound up with the most basic elements of their everyday existence, including their every “breath” and all the ups and downs—“smiles” and “tears”—of life. This passage therefore emphasizes how the speaker’s love encompasses all aspects of life and death, including both secular and spiritual existence. On a formal level, it’s also important to note the significant slowdown that occurs in the poem’s penultimate line: “Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose.” Although Browning has used caesura elsewhere in the poem, this line presents an extreme case that involves not just one mid-line pause, but four. The additional punctuation slows the pace of the language way down, building a sense of tension that’s released in the poem’s fluid final line.