In this sonnet, Shakespeare examines what love is not. The first 126 are addressed to a young man the last 28 are either addressed to, or refer to, a woman. Wise" (Ian Ousby, ed., The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English 889). There were many sonnets to choose from, but this one contains the most influential lines for me. The sonnets cover such themes as the passage of time, love, infidelity, jealousy, beauty and mortality. Apparently it was as a result of her husband's nicknaming her"the little Portugee" in admiration of the poems that led to her entitling them Sonnets from the Portugese."The volume was the object of a notorious bibliographical fraud, the so-called "Reading edition" of 1847 fabricated by T. Note: The title of Elisabeth Barrett Browning's sequence of 44 sonnets (published in 1850, somewhat after their composition) is deliberately misleading, intended to disguise the intensely personal nature of these love lyrics, written prior to her secret marriage in September 1846 to Robert Browning after a three-year courtship. New York: Book League of America and Blue Ribbon Books, 1942. Transcribed from "Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," in The Best Known Poems of Elizabeth & Robert Browning. I shall but love thee better after death. Smiles, tears, of all my life and, if God choose, In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight I love thee to the depth and breadth and height How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
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