Mad Social Scientist ([info]mawaridi) wrote,
@ 2005-10-30 17:25:00
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Current mood: remember-y
Current music:It's Over - Lisa Loeb

I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

THOSE are the lines I've been trying to remember for three days. I knew something came between "I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise" and "I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints."

Yay, sonnets.

Sonnets from the Portuguese #43
Elizabeth Barret Browning

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.

I know there are poetry buffs who know more sonnets than I do and who would probably scoff at me for like something so well-known and 'mainstream' as this. But screw them. I like this. So there. :P


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[info]shehasathree
2005-10-30 07:24 am UTC (link)
*songlove*

(that's even...less...'high-brow' than liking well-known poetry, so...pffffff.)

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[info]mawaridi
2005-10-30 01:59 pm UTC (link)
pfffff indeed (aha, but contemporary songlove has modern pop culture cred, and so the audience of snobby people who might get snobby about it are looking for a different kind of sophistication. If you said you had songlove for my post with Hit Me Baby One More Time, then you might be safely considered un-high-brow *g* Not that such things matter anyway. Where are my Britney CDs?)

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[info]pink_soprano
2005-10-30 07:36 am UTC (link)
I'm coming to melbourne!!!

Just for two days...wednesday and thursday this week.

Any chance of catching up?

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[info]mawaridi
2005-10-30 01:51 pm UTC (link)
Yaaaay! :D

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[info]blindmouse
2005-10-30 09:29 am UTC (link)
I find it almost impossible to read 'How do I love thee' and actually see what's written there. It's been so firmly (and tragically) linked to valentine cards and plasticised love that it's like trying to read it through a haze of preconceptions.

(My god, how, many polysyllabic words can you fit in a sentence? At least one of them was made up, though.)

I like EBB - I love 'Grief' - but I've never been able to read that poem properly.

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[info]mawaridi
2005-10-30 01:55 pm UTC (link)
I suppose it is lucky that I first discovered it in a poetry book before I'd seen it anywhere else, so my earliest memories of it are untainted and I can like it without feeling dirty ;) That I remain hopelessly, pathetically, embarrassingly and sometimes cheesily romantic to this day, despite my attempts to be mature and sensible about such things and the fact that in some ways I am decidedly unromantic, doesn't hurt either *s*

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[info]foxe
2005-10-30 08:56 pm UTC (link)
Funny you should mention it, I was thinking of this one recently too. Although the lines that jumped out at me at the time were "to the level of every day`s/Most quiet need..." (the apostrophe is backwards because I can`t find the regular one on this keyboard!)

Number 6 is still my favourite though.

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