Elizabeth Barrett Browning Analysis

The Power of Happiness As Christopher Morley once said ,“there is only one success - to spend your life in your own way”. Similarly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and William Wordsworth both have successfully happy lives, although they are consoled in different ways. In both “How Do I Love Thee” by Elizabeth Browning and “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud” by William Wordsworth, there is a common theme of happiness depicted through the use of diction, however, Browning presents reasons as to why she achieves happiness from a physical human companion, whereas in Wordsworth’s, he discusses how his happiness comes from the inanimate prospects of nature, both using similes and personification to relay this to the reader. In “How Do I Love Thee”,
Though Browning needs a human companion, as many people do, to make her happy, Wordsworth finds conclusive happiness in the inanimate things of nature. Thinking back to a time of complete content, Wordsworth describes daffodils "tossing their heads in sprightly dance” (12). In this particular line of the poem, Wordsworth uses personification to describe the daffodils in an upbeat demeanor. He knows that the daffodils and things of nature will stay with him constantly through his life. Therefore, through the simile “continuous as the stars that shine” (7), Wordsworth shows why he depends on nature for his happiness through a careful selection of figurative language. As he describes the beauty and grace of the daffodils, Wordsworth “could not but be gay In such a jocund company”, using enjambment to show that the daffodils bring him a happiness he cannot help nor deny (15-16). Although Browning needs the aid and presence of a human being, Wordsworth relishes in “the bliss of solitude” (22), using only the things of nature to brighten his mood and devote his life. In addition, when in “vacant or pensive mood”(20) he thinks about the daffodils and is immediately consoled just by the memory of their beauty, thus reiterating his infatuation with