its great try to read about the writings of Elizabeth Barrett Browning............than

Hi, i need help comparing and contrasting "If thou must love me" and "How do i love thee". I understand the latter of the two, but i need help on understanding the first one before i can start my paper.

Let's take a look at the poem:

Sonnet XIV
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile--her look--her way
Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'--
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,--and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,--
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby !
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Claire, I'm not sure if I understand what E.B. B. is trying to say here. But it seems to me she is asking her lover to not be PHYSICALLY enamored, but to love being with her; to love her as a person, and not a sex object.


Les

[tinyurl.com]

That's what I thought too--that Browning was telling her lover not to love her for superficial reasons because those things may change, but to love her for the sake of love. However, my teacher told me that Browning is saying something much bigger than that, but would not help me figure out what it is. Does anyone have any idea?

Dunno, but please report back if you get the answer.

[www.cs.rice.edu]

[www.victorianweb.org]

[tinyurl.com]

Oops. Wrong sonnet, sorry.

[tinyurl.com]

I need help getting literary elements that are within this poem.