I'm sharing the poem of one English poet named Elizabeth Barret Browning, the wife of Robert Browning, the most respected and successful woman poet of the Victorian period. Her greatest work, SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE (1850), is a sequence of love sonnets addresses to her husband. At the age of 14, she wrote her first collection of verse, THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. It was followed by AN ESSAY ON MIND (1826), privately printed at her father's expense. Her translation of PROMETHEUS BOUND (1833) with other poems appeared anonymously. Browning's first work to gain critical attention was THE SERAPHIM, AND OTHER POEMS (1838).
When her POEMS (1844) appeared, it gained a huge popularity and was praised among others by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Elizabeth Browning's name was mentioned six years later in speculations about the successor of Wordsworth as the poet laureate.
Here's her poem that I also love.:
"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
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 a 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.
