Final answer:
The speaker in the poem is counting the ways in which he or she loves the person being addressed, describing love with various metaphors and expressing it as deep and all-encompassing.
Step-by-step explanation:
The speaker in the poem 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.' by Elizabeth Barrett Browning is counting the ways he or she loves the person being addressed. The poem lists several metaphors and comparisons to express the depth and breadth of the speaker's love. The love is described as being vast and all-encompassing, reaching to the extremes of the speaker's soul and existing at every level of daily life—both in times of quiet need and more poignant moments.
The love is equated to the speaker's past and present emotions and to the endurance of their love beyond life itself. This deeply emotional sonnet does not concern the speaker's capacity for overcoming difficulties or focusing on the grief of lost childhood figures ('lost saints'), nor does it explore how the person being addressed could improve.