I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

These lines come from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnet 43” in Sonnets from the Portuguese, the sequence of love sonnets written during her courtship with Robert Browning in the mid-1840s. Barrett Browning had lived for years as an invalid under her father’s strict control, and the relationship—conducted largely through letters—offered her emotional and spiritual renewal. The sonnets were composed privately and later published (1850) under the guise of “translations” to preserve intimacy. The quoted closing couplet intensifies the poem’s catalogue of love’s dimensions by projecting it beyond mortal life into a Christian hope of continued love after death.

The speaker measures love not only by grand ideals but by the ordinary substance of living—“breath, / Smiles, tears”—suggesting devotion that permeates every moment and emotion. By pairing physical necessity (breath) with the full range of feeling (joy and sorrow), the lines claim a love that is comprehensive and resilient. The final clause, “if God choose,” introduces humility and faith: the endurance of love after death is not asserted as human certainty but entrusted to divine will. The effect is both passionate and reverent, making romantic attachment inseparable from spiritual aspiration and the hope of permanence.

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 every day’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 the 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.