How Do I Love Thee? Sonnet 43 by Alice B. Dearden

Quire of Cheahs is very proud to present the world première of Alice B.
Deardens How Do I Love Thee? a poignant and beautiful setting of Sonnet 43 by the celebrated Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The opening words of this well-known sonnet might lead us to expect an analytical enumeration of love -- but instead Elizabeth Barrett Brownings poem is a passionate outpouring of feeling.
And yet it is analytical as well as she seeks to explain to herself? to the beloved? what it means to love to the depth and breadth and height her soul can reach.
If the unexamined life is not worth living is love not also worth examining? I have known this poem for a long time.
When I was young I found its intensity over the top -- but as I have grown older perhaps I have also grown less suspicious and more appreciative of the honesty and courage here displayed.
At any rate I set it for SSATB choir in 2019 hoping a local choir would perform it in 2020.
We all know where that went...but now I am delighted to hear this consummate performance by Quire of Cheahs. Alice B.
Dearden 2020 -- How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 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 days 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 childhoods 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.

Источник: rutube.ru