Comparatively, How Do I Love Thee is a very romantic poem that conceals a fragile, but very passionate essence. It is considerably different to Remember, but they do share one similarity; both are petrarchan sonnets. How Do I Love Thee is more conventional as it expresses a love so deep, that nothing could force both partners apart. It also explores a very complex love filled with many past events and great amounts of feelings that have affected the relationship in one way or another. Its rhyme scheme, ABBA, reflects upon the changes in her love over time, as the poem speaks about love in the past, the love at present and the love after death. It has an iambic rhythm which emphasises on the broadness of her love. The tone is more affectionate than passionate, but this love seems to have passed through a great amount of time and gone through a great amount of trials, yet has still managed to remain stable and the passion has not completely disappeared. Although the poem progresses very steadily, it evidently still manages to carry its meaning across to the reader.
Despite all three poems obviously sharing the theme of love, they all present this theme in different ways. In First Love the love John Clare describes is love at first sight; the special feeling you experience when you observe someone for the first time. When he uses the phrase “As that I stood before”, it gives the impression of the whole poem describing the feelings gained in one moment. However, in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s How Do I Love Thee the love is throughout life and it predominantly focuses on the extent of her love as shown by the sentence “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height”. This depicts the greatness of her love and the focus remains on the three nouns, “breadth”, “depth” and “height” which further add to her description of her love being so powerful and in a sense immaculate. On the other hand, Remember by Christina Rossetti focuses on the power of undying love; the love after death. However, the theme shifts at the very end of the poem when she says “Better by far you should forget and smile than that you remember and be sad”. This explains that she does not want her lover to go through life in constant grief, but be happy, even if it means forgetting her.
Usage of language in all three poems is extremely important and very different. In First Love the language presents natural imagery; in Remember the language brings a range of emotions across to the reader, but in How Do I Love Thee the language is more romantic and soft spoken, however still very serious. The language varies greatly in all three poems and certain parts of the poems show these differences. When John Clare describes his love “blooming like a sweet flower” it gives the impression that his love is very natural and pure as he is comparing it to nature itself. These phrases lead onto the idea of a spiritual side to the poem, when analysed in depth. However, when Christina Rossetti says “For if the darkness and corruption leave”, it brings across a range of negative feelings such as loss and death. The language almost seems to be the ultimate reversal of First Love. Differently, Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses her love in a much more affectionate manner saying that “she loves thee purely” and “she loves thee freely”, which shows the strength of her love and that it is very passionate. The language is contrasting in all three poems, because the three of them aim to describe love in different ways and the language enables them to do so.
Progression is significant in all three poems and whereas they all do show great progression when comparing the beginning of the poem to the end, the rate at which they progress is very diverse. Being a sonnet, Remember seems to almost have no progression in the octave as the focus remains on “remembering [her] when no more day by day you tell me of our future that you planned”. However, once the poem goes into the sestet, it changes focus to the subject of mourning and forgetfulness when she speaks of him “forgetting her for a while”. Yet, in How Do I Love Thee, the rate of progression is very gradual. In the first part of the poem, she enunciates the extent of her love; the caesura on the first line emphasises the question “How Do I Love Thee?” and also the beginning of the answer, “Let me count the ways”. She follows on with this by examining her love from several different aspects such as “Men striving for right” and “Them turning from praise”. However, towards the end she begins to talk about the devotion to her religious beliefs when she speaks of “a love she seemed to lose”. On the other hand, First Love has a different progression rate; the fact that it is separated into 3 stanzas helps make the progression more noticeable. Whereas the first stanza deals with how he was “struck” with love and how his “face turned pale”, the second continues to talk about similar things, but explains more about the intensity of the love he felt as “he could not see a single thing”. As he concludes the poem in the final stanza, he compares his love to “flowers” and “snow” and finishes off by changing the poem’s focus to how the love struck him in the one moment in time. The progression may be slightly similar, however, the rates of progression differ in all three poems and this is mainly because they aim to carry across different messages to the reader.
Many features in these three poems, seem different when analysed in detail, but seem similar from the surface. Tone is unlike them as it is completely different even when you are just reading the poem, without truly thinking about it. How Do I Love Thee has a romantic tone; the reader becomes involved in her affection and passion towards her lover which creates an atmosphere of a burning, intensified and protruding romance. This is more the case when she says “I love thee to the level of every day’s” and “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life”. These descriptions do not define an obsessive and compulsive fascination with the man whom she is in love with, but a much more trustworthy and adoring romance. This tone that is built up is the complete opposite of the possessive and almost counterfeit romance in My Last Duchess by Robert Browning. Remember’s tone is very emotional, but certain parts of the poem express specific emotions to the reader. “When you can hold me no more by the hand” describes her romance having lost all sentiment and meaning, being a negative statement. Although the poem, never changes to having a complete positive tone, the atmosphere built up seems to become less negative towards the end of the poem; mainly in the sestet. The phrase “And afterwards remember, do not grieve”, is certainly not joyous, but slightly less pessimistic and depressing. The tone in First Love is completely unlike the other two poems; it is natural when looked at from the surface due to the wide nature lexis when he explores his love from viewpoints such as “trees”, “flowers” and “snow”, however when examined, it is somewhat spiritual. The idea of her “stealing his heart away complete” and him “never seeing so sweet a face” suggest that she brings him into another dimension; one that symbolises the purity of love. It is almost as if the aura she creates takes away all the impurities in his life. Tone is definitely the feature that differs the most in these three poems.
Perhaps not the most important, but certainly a significant feature in these three poems is their structure and form. Remember, being a petrarchan sonnet, has a fairly simple structure. It is split up into the basic octave and the sestet. The octave constantly repeats the word “me”, which emphasises that the focus of this part of the poem is on Christina Rossetti herself who has passed away. In the sestet, the poem changes viewpoint to the man who was in love with her and has now lost her and this is shown by the repetition of the word “you”. First Love, however has a different structure and presentation to the other two poems, which are fairly similar. It is separated into three stanzas, which all discuss different topics; however there is still a sense of interconnection. In the first stanza he explores the feelings of being “struck” with love. This topic continues in the second stanza, but he focuses more on comparisons and “blood burning round [his] heart”. The third stanza shifts the poem’s focus even more to the love being so concentrated, despite only lasting for one second. This structure is similar to A Woman To Her Lover by Christina Walsh, but the poem has different lengths of stanzas for emphasis; the stanzas in First Love tend to be of similar length. In How Do I Love Thee, being a petrarchan sonnet has the octave discussing the current situation of her love and how far her “soul can reach”, whereas the sestet focuses on the possibilities of her love in the future and how “if God choose, she shall love thee better after death”. The main change between the octave and the sestet is the time she is discussing, but also the context of the romance.
First Love, How Do I Love Thee & Remember are completely different in countless ways. On the surface while read without much analysis or thought, they are viewed as different, mainly in the message they try and carry across and it is because the aims of the poems are so different that features such as tone, structure, rhyme, rhythm and language are so varied in these poems.
