Sonnet XLIII

                 
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
 I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, -I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
 
Elizabeth Barreth Browning
 
 
 
 

      

      

        
Sonnets from the Portuguese 

      

      

        
Not with a club 
        the heart is broken, 

        Nor with a stone;

        A whip, so small you could not see it,

        I’ve known 

        To lash the magic creature

        Till it fell, 

        Yet that whip’s name too noble

              Then to tell.

        Magnanimous of birds

        By boy descried,

        To sing unto the stone

        Of which it died.

      
        
Elizabeth Barreth Browning

        
 

        
 

      

      

        
 

      

      

        

      

      

        
 

      

      

        
 

      

      

        
 

      

      

        
 

      

      

        Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink

        Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain

        Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

        and rise and sink and rise and sink again.

        Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath

        Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

        Yet many a man is making friends with death

        even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

        It well may be that in a difficult hour,

        pinned down by need and moaning for release

        or nagged by want past resolutions power,

        I might be driven to sell you love for peace,

        Or trade the memory of this night for food.

        It may well be. I do not think I would.

        

        by Edna 
      St. Vincent Millay

        
 

        

      
        

        
 

        
Sonnet #CXVI

        
Let me not to the marriage of true minds

        Admit impediments. Love is not love

        Which alters when it alteration finds,

        Or bends with the remover to remove:

        O, no! it is an ever fixed mark,

        That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

        It is the star to every wandering bark,

        Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

        Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

        Within his bending sickle's compass come;

        Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

        But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

        If this be error and upon me proved,

        I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

        
William Shakespeare 

        
        
 

        

      
        

        
 

        
      
        
Sonnet #XXIX

        
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's 
        eyes,

        I all alone between my outcast state.

        And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

        And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

        Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

        Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd

        Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

        With what I most enjoy contented least;

        Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

        Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

        like to the lark at break of day arising

        From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

        For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

        That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

        
William Shakespeare 

        

      
 

      


 

    

  

  




 



 





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