The poem opens with an echo of a famous line, "How do I love thee?", as a woman asks her lover the question and starts listing the ways. The speaker laughs it off. Calling it "silly," he says there is really only one way to love, and it can't be broken into a tally.
To show what he means, he turns to images from nature. His love is "seamless, boundless, like sunshine," sunlight streaming through leaves, with no seams or edges to count. Then the poem narrows to a single dewdrop balanced on the tip of a leaf, and the speaker calls it "so precious." Love is both vast and fragile, wide as light and small as a drop of water.
The mood is gentle, warm, and quietly playful. The teasing tone softens into tenderness, and the poem ends on a still, shining image rather than an argument.