The poems “To My Dear and Loving Husband” written by Anne Bradstreet and “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning are both poems about unconditional love and adoration. Even though these women had hardship and trying times in their own lives they were still able to construct these highly regarded poems of genuine love. When comparing and contrasting these two poems I find that one is written to a specific person while the other is to an unidentified loved one, each poet uses imagery and symbolism differently to convey their meaning, and both share true devoted commitment to their loved one.
On one hand, both poems are similar as they both are written about someone they love completely. Yet they are different in such a way that Anne obviously is speaking to her husband. When Anne references “thee” in line two, “If ever man were loved by wife, then thee”(Literature for Life 508), I am confident she is referring to her husband, and also the poem's title also clarifies for the reader. Where as, Elizabeth is more open with her poem making me wonder who she is exactly talking to. There is no line in the poem affirming who the poem is meant for. I’m going to speculate she has written this poem for her husband as well, since learning more about the author Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I found out that she had eloped with her fellow poet Robert Browning in 1846 (Literature for Life 509). And yet Anne’s poem could be written about her husband but for other women to read considering line four, “Compare with me, ye women, if you can”(Literature for Life 509). In other words, this could mean she wrote the poem for many readers, such as other married women, so they could measure Anne’s deep love for he...
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...ll only get better, even in the afterlife.
Consequently, after reading and comparing these two poems anyone will find themselves wanting to feel the same passion for loving someone so inextricably. I realize poems can either be written to a specific person or can be more anonymous and only revealing a poem about someone loved so deeply. And that both of these poems use beautiful imagery and symbolism to emphasis and show how dedicated, committed and unconditional their love is and should be cherished above all.
Works Cited
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.” Literature for Life.
Ed. X. J. Kennedy, Dana Gioia, and Nina Revoyr. New York: Pearson. 2013. 509. Print.
Bradstreet, Anne. “To My Dear and Loving Husband.” Literature for Life. Ed. X. J. Kennedy,
Dana Gioia, and Nina Revoyr. New York: Pearson. 2013. 508. Print.
...g. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. 549-51. Print.
William E. Cain, Alice McDermott, Lance Newman, and Hilary E. Wyss. New York: New York, 2013. 48-53. Print.
Both poems inspire their reader to look at their own life. In addition, they treat the reader to a full serving of historic literature that not only entertains, but also teaches valuable lesson in the form of morals and principles.
Eds. Gary Goshgarian and Kathleen Kruger. New York: Parson-Longman, 2011. 500-04. The. Print.
Love is the ubiquitous force that drives all people in life. If people did not want, give, or receive love, they would never experience life because it is the force that completes a person. Although it often seems absent, people constantly strive for this ever-present force as a means of acceptance. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is an influential poet who describes the necessity of love in her book of poems Sonnets from the Portuguese. In her poems, she writes about love based on her relationship with her husband – a relationship shared by a pure, passionate love. Browning centers her life and happiness around her husband and her love for him. This life and pure happiness is dependent on their love, and she expresses this outpouring and reliance of her love through her poetry. She uses imaginative literary devices to strengthen her argument for the necessity of love in one’s life. The necessity of love is a major theme in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 43” and “Sonnet 29.”
The.. Ed. Lynn Z. Bloom and Louise Z. Smith. 3rd ed. of the year. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2011.
New York: Pearson; Longman Publishing, 2007. 1212-1280. Print. The. Gioia, Dana, and X.J. Kennedy.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 's "Sonnet XLIII" speaks of her love for her husband, Richard Browning, with rich and deeply insightful comparisons to many different intangible forms. These forms—from the soul to the afterlife—intensify the extent of her love, and because of this, upon first reading the sonnet, it is easy to be impressed and utterly overwhelmed by the descriptors of her love. However, when looking past this first reading, the sonnet is in fact quite ungraspable for readers, such as myself, who have not experienced what Browning has for her husband. As a result, the visual imagery, although descriptive, is difficult to visualize, because
Browning displays the discovery of one's identity. When she states “I love thee with the passion put to use”/”In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.” ( 9-10 Browning), the love she had for her husband allowed her to realize her identity by reminiscing about her childhood. This realization allowed her to discover herself and it illuminated her true identity. The common theme of realizing one's identity relates Hawthorne and Browning to the romanticism era that they were part of which correlates to why they both shared a similar theme.
Givens 1 Harold Givens Instructor Ms. Pettey English 2323 29, May 2017 Critique Assignment II “Woman Questions” in the Victorian Era; many of the readers who like these poems associate it with the dilemma pertaining to making choices and opinions on how women are treated in society in general. Its interesting to see how different eras thought and treated women differently or how they viewed women in different mannerisms. When studying literature Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning appear as one of the romantic literacy couples from the Victorian period; After reading her poems for the first time, Robert wrote to her: “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett – I Do, as I say, love these verses with all
Love is something that everyone is familiar with, it is a special emotion that is reserved for the use between two people who mean a lot to each other. It is a something that William Butler Yeats wants the other person in his poem, "When You Are Old" to remember for eternity, meanwhile in Robert Browning's, "My Last Duchess" the Duke does not mention loving his own wife. Both poems deal with the theme of love, however the way love is shown in both are nothing alike. In Yeats' poem, assuming he is the male character, he wants his wife to remember how much he loved her when he is no longer there to show her his affection.
Bradstreet, Anne. "The Author to her Book." An Introduction to Poetry. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
By using references of her grief or her losses, Browning creates a more realistic view of her love suggesting that her love is sincere as it comes from a grieved person, which differs to the positive and idealistic feelings portray in the first octave. The poet then talks about her fondness of her love, revealing that her she lives for her love “ I love thee with the breath, / smiles, tears, of all my life;” (line 12-13), the asyndetic listings of the verbs ‘breath’, ‘smiles’ and ‘tears’, implying that her love can stem from different emotions she feels such as happiness and sadness, suggesting to her beloved that her love comes from good and sad points of her life.
In the poem "How do I Love Thee", Elizabeth Barret Browning expresses her everlasting nature of love and its power to overcome all, including death. In the introduction of the poem Line 1 starts off and captures the reader’s attention. It asks the simple question, "How do I Love Thee?" Throughout the rest of the poem repetition occurs. Repetition of how she would love thee is a constant reminder in her poem. However, the reader will quickly realize it is not the quantity of love, but its quality of love; this is what gives the poem its power. For example she says, “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” She is expressing how and what she would love with, and after death her love only grows stronger. Metaphors that the poet use spreads throughout the poem expressing the poets love for her significant other.
It seems that over the years, true love is expressed less and less. We are bombarded with holiday cards filled with someone else’s words, and are practically forced to send our love in an email. How often do we actually sit down and write out our feelings to the one we love? “To My Dear and Loving Husband,” however, is the quintessential love letter. Anne Bradstreet shares her feelings to her husband in such a loving way that could make anyone’s heart melt. According to BellaOnline, Bradstreet was, “married to governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony and had eight children.” Even though her marriage might have become filled with routines and lost a little passion, the poet never loses the love for her husband. She states that the power of her “…love is such that rivers cannot quench”(Bradstreet, 7). Bradstreet expresses her emotions to be so strong that not even a roaring river can possibly satisfy them. She prizes her husband’s “…love more than whole mines of gold/ Or all the riches that the East doth hold,” (Bradstreet, 5-6) meaning she values his affection more than any amount of money she could obtain. The sonnet goes on to prove how everlasting true love can be when Bradstreet states, “…when we live no more, we may live ever”(12). She wishes to...