Best Love Poem

موضوع: Best Love Poem الأحد يناير 31, 2010 12:19 am

This is one of the best poems ever in English literature by the well known poetest Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

*thee=you
It is archaic, i.e., old formal English

My comment on this poem is that I love it and still in love with it. Elizabeth here is expressing her feelings to her husban: the well known poet, Rober Browning, who is a poet too.
Perhaps E.B.B. was the pioneer of using figurative dimensions to measure love. The feelings are so deep and the depiction, though exaggerated, yet acceptable for love-couple under the spell of love. The passion by the end of the poem declairs that its mortality. It corosses the barrier to eternity in hereafter. How amazing!!

About the poet and her husband
Their story is romantic because at that time in the middle of 19th century, women were not allowed to attend university. Elizabeth admired Robert's -before they fell in love-- poetry and she used to ask him help her in understanding and writing poetry. When they fell in love, Robert was rejected by Mr. Barrett because he did not have fortune and he had was his poem -like word seller- and he, Mr. Barret, assumed that his daughter would live miserabley with Browning. But since the couple could not bear being apart, they eloped and married secretly in London, then they travelled to Italy where the lived together.

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