Elizabeth continued to write, and the high quality of her poetry brought her critical recognition and some financial success. By the time she was in her late 30s, Elizabeth was among the best-known and most highly respected poets in the country.
Her work drew the attention of another poet, Robert Browning, who eventually wrangled an invitation to visit. In May of , they met and fell in love. Elizabeth began to write a series of sonnets, among the most famous in English literary history, celebrating her love for Robert.
To be together, they had to to elope. The couple moved to Florence, Italy, where they settled into the happy life of two writers who still had enough independent means to live well enough to have the freedom to devote themselves to their work. In Italy, her health improved, though she still used laudanum, a derivative of heroin, to control her pain and elevate her mood. At age 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert, whom they always called Pen. 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. How Much? How much do you love me, a million bushels? Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more. And to-morrow maybe only half a bushel? To-morrow maybe not even a half a bushel. And is this your heart arithmetic? This is the way the wind measures the weather.
Carl Sandburg William Shakespeare My Love Sent Me a List O my Love sent me a lusty list, Did not compare me to a summer's day Wrote not the beauty of mine eyes But catalogued in a pretty detailed And comprehensive way the way s In which he was better than me. About this poem: "No, really, a found poem; however, I also find, that if one reads thirty or so Shakespearean sonnets in a row out loud , something is bound to happen.
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Show all poems. Learn more about this image. How Do I Love Thee? For starters, the inspiration behind the work was Elizabeth's love for the man who had, for all intents and purposes, rescued her from a quietly desperate, reclusive lifestyle she led in London, following the accidental death of her closest brother.
Dominated by her possessive father, Elizabeth spent most of her time alone in an upstairs room. She was a frail, sick woman who needed opium and laudanum in an effort to cure her pain. Her only consolation was poetry, and at this she was very successful. When Robert Browning read her work, he was so impressed he wrote asking to meet her. Following several formal meetings, the two eventually fell in love and decided to secretly elope to Italy in , despite her father's resistance and anger.
He ended up disinheriting his daughter. Elizabeth and Robert exchanged hundreds of love letters over the two years from In them you get a clear idea of just how much they adored one another. Take this excerpt from Elizabeth in , near the time of their elopement:. I have come back to live a little for you.
I love you - I bless God for you - you are too good for me, always I knew. Elizabeth was close to 40 years of age when she broke free from the control of her father. You can imagine her pent up strength of feeling and sense of relief. She went on to give birth to a son and was happily married for 16 years, until her death in It has a female narrator, which was highly unusual for the time.
This sonnet helped kick-start many more on the theme of modern Victorian love, from a woman's perspective. Note the emphasis is on the repetition and reinforcement of the speaker's love for someone; there is no mention of a specific name or gender, giving the sonnet a universal appeal. The first line is unusual because it is a question asked in an almost conversational manner—the poet has challenged herself to compile reasons for her love, to define her intense feelings, the ways in which her love can be expressed.
There then follows a repetitive variation on a theme of love. To me this conjures up an image of a woman counting on her fingers, then compiling a list, which would be a very modern, 21st century thing for a female to do.
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