The Counting Of Reasons By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.

For centuries, authors have used literary devices to get their meaning across in their literature. Not only do literary devices assist in this purpose, it also helps convey the underlying message in their theme. Throughout the poem, the narrator continues to love his beautiful wife; even after her untimely death. In the poem, “Annabel Lee”, Edgar Allen Poe uses repetition, alliteration, and internal rhyme to develop the theme of eternal love.

The imagery used effectively showcases the presence of love in this work. The boy in the poem

Love is not always an easy adventure to take part in. As a result, thousands of poems and sonnets have been written about love bonds that are either praised and happily blessed or love bonds that undergo struggle and pain to cling on to their forbidden love. Gwendolyn Brooks sonnet "A Lovely Love," explores the emotions and thoughts between two lovers who are striving for their natural human right to love while delicately revealing society 's crime in vilifying a couples right to love. Gwendolyn Brooks uses several examples of imagery and metaphors to convey a dark and hopeless mood that emphasizes the hardships that the two lovers must endure to prevail their love that society has condemned.

The Sonnet sequence also involves the idea of identity with Barrett Browning coming to terms with her emerging sexuality and realisation of love. The sequence was written by Barrett Browning thus providing a personal voice to the sonnets allowing a portrayal of the sequence of events of her personal identity and expression of love. Throughout the sonnet sequence Browning develops a stronger sense and realisation of her love for Robert, hence shaping her identity. By sonnet 43 a series of elements introduced by the simple phrase “I love thee” where the repetition intensifies the affirmation, she declares that her love is free and pure and possesses passion. Most importantly Browning now holds a sense of identity as she has achieved her idealized type of love.

The acceptance of love has the power of transforming an individual to demand of that same love. The social context of the 1850’s was seen to be emphasised on individual’s emotions and rebellion against established social rules and convections which was evident in her open declarations of love and demanding’s of love which was a concept of idealised love. The notion of idealised love transforming an individual is presented in the ‘Sonnets from the Portuguese’. Sonnet 14 as Elizabeth Browning urges her lover to not love her for any particular reason other than “love’s sake only”. In the Octave, the first line is EBB talking directly to whom she loves and she uses high modality in the word ‘must’, making it seem like she

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.

Through the use of poetic devices such as repetition or alliteration, the author originally describes what love is not capable of providing and defines love as unnecessary but by the end of the poem, the author reveals that love has some value.

The poem “How do I love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways”, was written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning in 1850. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born in 1806 in England, as a child, she did not have the best childhood when she was growing up. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a young child when she was diagnosed with lung disease that required her to take medications for the rest of her life, and she had also suffered from an injury on her spinal cord when she was riding on her horse at the age of fifteen. The poem “How do I love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways” was one of the sonnets in Sonnet of the Portuguese which was dedicated to her husband Robert Browning. This poem was secretly written before she got married because her and Robert were exchanging letters

Initially, Barrett Browning’s misunderstanding of love implies her innocence, apparent in the utilisation of direct speech in Sonnet I, “Not Death, but Love,”, emphasising her surprise. However, as the sonnets progress her views are altered and Sonnet XIV accentuates Barrett Browning’s yearning to be loved and urges Browning to reemphasise his love, “But love me for love’s sake, that evermore thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity,”. Imperative voice and diction indicates Barrett Browning’s preoccupation for an everlasting love that is not influenced by superficial circumstances. This notion is reiterated in Sonnet XXI, “Say thou dost love me, love me, love me,”. Imperative tone is utilised, urging Browning to repeatedly express his love for her. The idealised love that EBB envisions can surpass even Death, reflected in her Victorian

George Gascoigne’s sonnet, “For That He Looked Not upon Her,” portrays a sullen man, hurt by the woman he loved. Through the uses of form, diction, and imagery, the sonnet evokes a complex attitude in each quatrain elaborating on the stages of torment the speaker receives from his ex-lover. By using these literary devices, the speaker portrays the dangers of desire and the conflicts that arise from within it. Gascoigne conveys a solemn and melancholy complex attitude developed throughout the use of such literary devices. The attitude of the speaker, expressed through the form of the sonnet, explains the dangers of gazing at the woman who burned him.

The persona in Barret Browning’s sonnets highly values a spiritualistic form of love that extends far beyond the physical realm. This is best demonstrated in Sonnet 43 where the subversion of the traditional structure of the Petrarchan sonnet heightens the intensity of persona’s female voice and the outpouring of love. Through the use of a grand spacial metaphor in the line, “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/ My soul can reach,” the persona insinuates that the intensity of the love she shares with her lover transcends to the furthermost dimensions of the spiritual world. In essence, there really are no boundaries to their love.

This transitions quickly to the future she paints in stanza three when she promises that her love will still be as passionate and fresh as “childhood’s faith” into her “old griefs” and age. She provides a sense of assurance to her lover in the line “I love thee with a love I seemed to lose / With my lost saints,” with the word “seemed,” indicating that he were to lose her, he would not lose her love. This theme is again strongly reinforced in the last couplet when she states and returns to a present tense “and, if God choose, / I shall but love thee better after death.” She returns to present tense to prove that even if one of them dies, she will love him even more. In her poem, Browning establishes the theme that love transcends

In the compilation, Barrett Browning wrote about her love to Robert Browning. Even though the title refers that the sonnets are translated from Portuguese, it is just an illusion because Barrett Browning hesitated to publish them in the beginning therefore she used the title as a guise. Sonnet 43 is one of the best known sonnets from the compilation. The rhyme scheme of the poem is ABBA-ABBA-CD-CD-CD and written in iambic pentameter. It is a type of Petrarchan sonnet. In the first line the poet asks a question “How do I love thee?” (Browning 1130), and in the rest of the sonnet she answers her question. In the second line she draws an abstract shape of her love by using the words “depth, breadth, height”. In the third and fourth lines her love turns into a spiritual love. In the fifth and sixth lines, she claims that she can fulfil her lover’s every simple need in day or in night. In the next three lines she expresses that she loves her beloved one freely, purely, and passionately. In the next two lines, we see that the poet’s love is as innocent as a child’s faith. She loves her beloved with all her good and bad feelings. At the end of the poem, she says if God allows, her love will last long even after her death. In the poem the author used the alliteration as a figure of speech nearly in all lines. In the seventh and eighth lines, there are two similes starting with the word “as” (1130).

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I love thee?" This poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is one of many she penned for her husband Robert Browning. Using the basic form of an Italian sonnet with its fourteen lines and strict rhyme scheme - she manages to produce a surprisingly passionate poem.