How Do I Love Thee?!

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 everyday'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.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"...feeling out of sight for the ends of Being and ideal Grace."

Who has not felt this pull to the "ends of Being"-a desire to stretch out to the corners of the sky and dissolve into the pure receptive fecundity of the ether? And yet we want to keep a part of our own particular loves-our soul feels it a scandal to relinquish its little objects of affection. We know they must one day go if we are to incarnate "ideal Grace", but we don't want to let them go yet. We decide, then, to seek the kernel of heaven in our gripping, fevered loves. We decide to love "with the passion put to use in [our] old griefs." How can we not then hope to love "better after death", having knowingly added our grief induced passions to the mix? I'm not giving the Orthodox stamp of approval to these sentiments, just pointing out that they seem an accurate representation of the soul's movements from a romantic to a spiritual love.