Old love vs. new?

This is a poem by Elizabeth Barret Browning, which is alluded to in William Tenesse's A Streetcar Named Desire. Following the poem is the poem with inserts in red that are my thoughts about what the poem is saying. Then I conjecture what the meaning of the poem could be and how that connects to the play.

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

XLIII

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 candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men might 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.

______________________

from Sonnets from the Portuguese

XLIII

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

Talking about love being more than just love, but something essential to one's life.
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
This love is eternal, strong, and intense- something that seems perfect.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
Love is something the author feeds off of. (But not in a weird way)
I love thee freely, as men might strive for Right;
Love is something that is right, what should happen.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
What does that mean, "as they turn from Praise"?
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
This mention of past and childhood reminds me of Blanche.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
"With my lost saints"- the person the author loves has replaced all doubts and fears.
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
Her love has become her life, and in the end, she will continue to love.
I shall but love thee better after death.

These are several things that came to mind:

• Mitch and the girl who gave him his lighter
• Mitch and Blanche connect over the death of a loved one- both of them seemed destined to live in the past and never marry someone else (Blanche stuck in the past, Mitch living with his mother).
• Blanche and her lost lover
• There are the obvious connections with how powerful Blanche loves her lost lover, and how much it affects her- Stella often remarks about how beautiful Blanche used to be, in love- the sentence  "I love thee to the depth and breadth and height / My soul can reach" (lines 2-3, Browning) really seems to parallel Blanche's emotions.
• But I think it also goes to how Blanche is stuck in the past. The first time I read the poem, the last line, "I shall but love thee better after death", I thought of Mitch and his girlfriend, and how after she died her love still went on- but in Blanche's case, Blanche loves her husband better after death- literally. She was disgusted with him right before he died, and afterwards she devoted (unconsciously) her whole life to him.
• From the poem, lines 9-10: "I love thee with the passion put to use / In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith". Much like these lines, Blanche's love for her husband keep her with her old griefs and thinking about her childhood's faith. She once mentions her blindness about love, her first love, and this contrasts with the present in the play. She looks for security instead. Yet she has a different opinion about love than the "normal" people (Stella and Stanley, Eunice and Steve). So I think she may still have her childhood faith in love that it is something that should be perfect, something she looks for in Mitch, instead of love being practical and with some gray areas.
• Perhaps even Stella and her love of Stanley?
• Stella seems to love Stanley like the author describes it- something real, although she is more practical than Blanche in her love. I guess the irony is that Stanley's love does not seem the same. He loves her, but in a different way- the way I read it, in a more sexual way. Although as were were talking in class, Stella likes Stanley in a sexual way too. The poem seems to talk about something much larger, as in connection with the person him/herself and not just their body...
• So this poem is, from A Streetcar Named Desire point of view, living in the past. Nowadays, love is something practical, that follows a system- somewhere in the play it is said that Stella is following the usual pattern- find a guy, marry, have a baby. Blanche isn't, though.

Anyways, those were just my initial thoughts.