Elizabeth was forty, still living with her father and siblings in Ireland. She suffered from a chronic lung disease and spent most of her time in bed, writing poetry. Her prospects for marriage were bleak, I’d say. She received a letter which began, “I have loved your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett.” It was signed by a young poet, Robert Browning. His letter hinted at having an interest in Elizabeth beyond her poetry. Befitting two literary types, they started writing—five hundred seventy-four letters over a twenty-month span. Her father was dead set against their courtship as he wouldn’t permit any of his twelve children to marry. Elizabeth and Robert married secretly in 1846 and bolted for a warmer climate to relieve Elizabeth’s congestion. Her father disowned her, refused to open her letters, and declined ever to see her again. Elizabeth said, “My father was a very peculiar man.” I should say so!
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) wrote a love sonnet during her courtship with Robert, Sonnet 43, as it came to be called, that included the epic line, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Her poem answers her own rhetorical question. Few poems can rival its warmth, tenderness, and sincerity. Her love in the poem rises to the spiritual level as in the line, “I love thee to the depth and height and length” which recalls Paul’s words in Ephesians about how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ (Eph. 3.18-19). Her poem closes with the memorable words, “I shall but love thee better after death.” She included this poem in a prose collection, Sonnets from the Portuguese, a play on the nickname Robert had given her, “my little Portugues.”
Elizabeth is not only a celebrated poet but a committed Christian, as evident in her prose. She wrote, “I do hold that a poet is a preacher.” She prays through her poem “While My Days Go On.”