How Do I Love Thee? Symbols?

Question

What are the symbols, or what is symbolised, in the poem "How Do I Love Thee?" and how are they symbolised?

Answer 1

In "How do I love thee", Mrs. Dickenson asks her husband, "Will you help with the dishes?"

Answer 2

Browning Love Symbol

Answer 3

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 every day'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.


With all due respect to you, and certainly to Elizabeth who I've mentioned no less than three times recently,,, This is a metaphorical, analogous piece. The Symbols are easily recognized. One of the Q's I answered dealt with "The Grace" which I feel, meant the AFTER DEATH; is only one.

Steven Wolf

Answer 4

"Sonnet 43" expresses the poet’s intense love for her husband-to-be, Robert Browning. So intense is her love for him, she says, that it rises to the spiritual level (Lines 3 and 4). She loves him freely, without coercion; she loves him purely, without expectation of personal gain. She even loves him with an intensity of the suffering (passion: Line 9) resembling that of Christ on the cross, and she loves him in the way that she loved saints as a child. Moreover, she expects to continue to love him after death.


See the links below:

Answer 5

usually the heart is a symbol for eternal love. but if you don't want a heart, or two linking hearts, a circle will do. the circle never ends, its always constant and can never be broken. or you can always do for the infinity symbol too.

Answer 6

01. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
The number of ways she loves are numerous. She would need to count them.

02. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Her love is three dimensional and therefore real, in the sense that all real physical things in the universe are three dimensional. Breadth is width, a measurement of how far across her love is. Height and depth represent how far down (deep) and how far up (high) her love is, in relation to her position in the universe.


03. My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
These measurements, though physical are also spiritual, as they pertain to her soul, which is body and spirit infused.

04. For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
This physical and spiritual measurement is of her soul and the very essence of her being to the ends of her existence.. Ideal Grace is capitalized and probably refers to God, and His most perfect gift--Salvation, and the opportunity to experience eternal love and bliss in His presence. She likens her love for her husband to that love of God.

05. I love thee to the level of every day's
06. Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
Her love is on the same level as our most basic needs--air, water, food, shelter, kinship and love--that need our attention day and night.

07. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
She loves him of her own free will, and not out of obligation. This is the kind of love that is freely given without any coercion by guilt or force or the threat of force. Men strive for Right freely, for it is necessary to their happiness.

08. I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
Modesty turns from praise because it needs it not. She loves him for the sake of love itself, and not to receive any praise.

09. I love with a passion put to use
10. In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
Passion put to use in her old griefs, is passion that hurts, that reminds one through pain that she is still alive. The same passion exists in the faith of a child, who believes without doubt because of a lack of life experience that would go contrary to it.

11. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
12. With my lost saints,
She loves him with the intensity one feels love during their innocence of youth, which she lost with her innocence, and feels it again for him.

-- I love thee with the breath,
13. Smiles, tears, of all my life!
She loves him with the breath of her life, with the happiness and sadness of her life.

-- and, if God choose,
14. I shall but love thee better after death.
Her love for him will not end at the grave, but, God willing, will continue on eternally.