How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)

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Literary Devices

Rhyme

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Literary Devices Rhyme

The rhyme scheme Browning used for “How Do I Love Thee?” follows the model of the Petrarchan sonnet, which is also known as the Italian sonnet. A typical Petrarchan sonnet is structured in two parts. The first part, known as the octave, consists of eight lines with the following rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA. The second part, known as the sestet, consists of six lines and has numerous rhyme variations that may feature either two or three new rhymes: for example, CDECDE or CDDCDD. For this Petrarchan sonnet, Browning used the following scheme: ABBAABBA CDCDCD. The rhymes in the poem are all masculine, meaning they occur on the final stressed syllable, always on a monosyllabic word. For the most part, the rhymes are also exact. However, Browning does insert several slant rhymes, which approximate each other without matching perfectly. For example, the sibilant S sound in “grace” (line 4) doesn’t quite match the voiced S sound in the other A rhymes: “ways,” “day’s,” and “praise” (lines 1, 5, and 8). Likewise, the long A sound in “faith” (line 10) diverges slightly from the short E sound in the other D rhymes: “breath” and “death” (lines 12 and 14).