Sonnet 43
Cards (5)
- I love thee to the depth and breadth and height:
- anaphora- beginning of each line - he is at the front of all her thoughts - her first love Robert - passion, obsession, infatuation
- tricolon of half-rhymes- irony emphasises how love can't be quantified
- "height"-religious imagery -heaven
- "Smile, tears, of all my life!-":
- positive and negative emotions - she loves him with everything she has
- exclamatory phrase
- has to take a pause in-between because she's getting emotional
- cesura - break up rhythm - makes her sound excited and breathless
- "I shall but love thee better after death":
- their love is timeless and eternal
- future tense - she is certain she will - level of commitment she is wiling to promise
- hopes that God will support their love
- context
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s brother drowned at a young age and as a result her father was very over-protective. She eloped against his wishes with the poet, Robert Browning, showing how important love was to her - her father disinherited her after she married Robert
- structure
- at the beginning of the poem she makes references to her love being limitless and she also reinforces this at the end in the last line ‘I shall but love thee more after death
- poem has the length of a traditional sonnet (14 lines) but doesn’t follow the traditional sonnet rhyme scheme. There are rhyming couplets yet the poem avoids a perfect rhyme scheme. Perhaps this reflects their relationship – unconventional but with close unity