How Do I Love Thee?

What the poem says

The poet answers her own question by counting. She loves to the full reach of her soul, and also at the level of everyday need, by sun and candlelight. She loves freely, purely, with the passion she once spent on grief and with a child's faith. The last line goes past the wedding day: if God chooses, she will love even better after death. The poem moves from the grand to the ordinary and back.

When it fits

Pick it for a couple that wants a poem about love spoken by one person to the other, read as a declaration. It suits a church wedding as well as a civil ceremony, since the mention of God is light. If the couple would rather hear about love that holds through change, Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare speaks about marriage itself.

Reading it aloud

A friend, a sister or a parent reads it in the wedding ceremony, often after the welcome or right before the vows. One partner can also read it to the other. Do not stress the old "thee": the sentence carries it. One tip: the lines run on past the line breaks, so breathe at the commas and periods, not at the end of each line. The poem fits on one page of the wedding program.

About the poet and the text

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote this sonnet for Robert Browning during their courtship and published it in 1850 as one of her Sonnets from the Portuguese, a title that hid how personal they were. We copied the text from the 1851 New York edition of Prometheus Bound, and Other Poems, through the Wikisource transcription, and checked it against the London first edition of 1850.