How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

I never gave a lock of hair away
To a man, Dearest, except this to thee,
Which now upon my fingers thoughtfully
I ring out to the full brown length and say
“Take it.” My day of youth went yesterday;
My hair no longer bounds to my foot’s glee,
Nor plant I it from rose- or myrtle-tree,
As girls do, any more: it only may
Now shade on two pale cheeks the mark of tears,
Taught drooping from the head that hangs aside
Through sorrow’s trick. I thought the funeral-shears
Would take this first, but Love is justified, — Take it thou, — finding pure, from all those years,
The kiss my mother left here when she died.

Since when was genius found respectable?

Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.