This whole poem is a list of all the different ways the
speaker loves the person the poem addresses. Elizabeth Browning was writing this to her
true love, Robert Browning. In these two lines she is expressing the pureness of her
love for him. When she states that she loves him freely, she means no one else is
'making her' love him. She loves him because it is what her heart is telling her to
do. She compares that feeling to the feeling of men who do the right thing just because
it is the right thing to do. The next line follows up that idea. She says, "I love
thee purely as they turn from praise" meaning I love you genuinely for the sake of love,
not because I will be praised for it. Just as good men don't do the right thing for
praise, they do it because it is the right thing to do. These two lines work together
to compare her love to the actions and attitudes of good men.
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