Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Summary, Meaning & Analysis
Sonnet 43 is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's best-known love poem, where she lists the many ways she loves her husband, Robert Browning.
Sonnet 43 is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's best-known love poem, where she lists the many ways she loves her husband, Robert Browning. She explores spiritual, everyday, and deeply personal expressions of love, illustrating how her feelings for him permeate every aspect of her existence. In the end, she even vows that, if God permits, her love will endure beyond death.
Tone & mood
The tone is passionate and genuine without being excessive. Browning isn't acting out her feelings for an audience; she comes across as someone who is quietly and completely sure of her emotions. There’s a calm, almost systematic way she constructs her list, which makes her feelings seem more credible, not less. By the end, this calmness transitions into something more serious — almost like a prayer.
Symbols & metaphors
- Counting / enumeration — The act of making a list carries its own significance. Love is often said to be immeasurable, so the decision to *measure* it is quite daring. Presenting it in list form indicates that this love is tangible and concrete, rather than vague or abstract.
- Depth, breadth, and height — These three spatial dimensions connect love to the physical universe. They also resonate with the language of Christian mysticism — especially Ephesians 3:18, which discusses understanding the dimensions of God's love. Given Browning's deep faith, he would have recognized this reference.
- Candlelight / sun and moon — Browning contrasts the gentle, domestic glow of a candle with the brighter lights of the sun and moon to highlight the difference between her quiet, everyday devotion and the broader spiritual aspect of her feelings—both coexist in her love.
- Old griefs — Her past suffering isn't merely part of her story; it represents the depth of a life experienced before this love came along. Channeling that energy into love shows growth and healing.
- Breath — Breath is the simplest indication of life. By using it here, she connects her love to her very existence—ceasing to love would, in a way, mean ceasing to live.
- Death / the afterlife — The closing gesture of love continuing after death elevates the poem from personal feelings to something eternal. It serves as both a religious hope and a rhetorical climax—the strongest evidence that this love knows no boundaries.
Historical context
Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned Sonnet 43 as part of her collection *Sonnets from the Portuguese*, which she wrote between 1845 and 1846 while secretly courting the poet Robert Browning. At that time, Elizabeth was in her late thirties, having spent years as a semi-invalid under her father's strict control, and she had mostly accepted that romantic love wasn't in her future. However, Robert's relentless and passionate letters changed her perspective. She composed the sonnets in private, only revealing them to him after they eloped to Italy in 1846. He encouraged her to publish them, and they were released in 1850 under a title that made them seem like translations. Today, the sequence is regarded as one of the greatest collections of love poetry in English, with Sonnet 43—being the second to last poem—serving as its emotional high point.
FAQ
The speaker reflects on her love and makes an effort to articulate it. This introduction paves the way for the rest of the poem, which becomes an inventory where she details every aspect and quality of her feelings for the person she loves.
Yes. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote it while she was courting the poet Robert Browning. The entire *Sonnets from the Portuguese* sequence is directed at him, although she disguised this by presenting them as translations.
It's a Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet, consisting of 14 lines written in iambic pentameter, split into an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines). Browning loosely adheres to this structure, using the octave to develop her argument and then resolving it in the sestet.
She compares her love to how principled people seek justice — not out of obligation, but because it's the right thing to do. Her love is driven by principles and choice, not just feelings.
She is reflecting on her own life to illustrate that this love taps into her deepest emotions. Grief and childhood faith are the most powerful feelings she knows, and she is expressing that her love for him matches — and now surpasses — that intensity.
It serves as both a religious assertion and a powerful rhetorical peak. Browning had faith in an afterlife, making the promise genuine — she longs for God to let her love persist and grow even after death. This also acts as the ultimate declaration: if love can endure beyond death, it really knows no bounds.
It’s the 43rd poem in *Sonnets from the Portuguese*. Instead of giving each poem an individual title, Browning chose to number them, which emphasizes the entire sequence rather than focusing on just one poem.
It’s a careful disguise. Robert Browning affectionately referred to Elizabeth as his 'little Portuguese,' a nickname that drew inspiration from her earlier poem 'Catarina to Camoëns.' By using this title, the sonnets appeared to be translations, preventing readers from quickly realizing they were actually autobiographical love poems.