Browning's love poem:Porphyria’s lover

Porphyria’s lover is the love poem of Robert Browning.
Browning wrote ‘Porphyria’ in his early twenties. . Porphyria’s lover was first published in The Monthly Respository (January 1836).Here is the summary of the love poem Porphyria’s Lover:

A stormy night- the violent wind tears the tops of elm-trees and ruffles the lake water. The lover is an insignificant person, not just socially but also morally. He is sitting alone by a burnt-out fire in his cottage waiting anxiously for his ladylove to come to him. Porphyria enter into the room silently and closes the door to keep the cold and wind out the cottage. Then she bends down to make the dying fire blaze up. The room gets warm. Then she removes one by one, her clothes, in order to waken him up from his torpor. She takes off her hat and her long, damp golden hair falls on her shoulder. Then she sits down by his side and lovingly addresses him. But his lover does not reply. Then she takes he lead once again, puts his arm about her waist. She bares her white shoulder for him and when he is still unresponsive he makes his cheek lie on it and covers his head with her golden locks. Then she tells him in a sweet low voice that she loves him passionately and that she is too weak to free herself from her false family pride and loveless marriage ties and to surrender herself completely to him for ever. But that night her passionate love for him gets the better of her pride and wifely duties, and comes to him turning her back upon the revelries in her house and braving the inclement weather.
The lover looked into the beloved’s eye – ‘happy and proud’. At last his doubts and fears are gone. He is sure she loves him deeply. He feels exulted. He is puffed up with a sense of superiority. While he is thus perched on the height of exultation, he is unable to decide what to do next, when a sudden thought flashed across his mind. Acting on his thought he makes her hair into a long cord, winds it thrice round her throat and strangulates her. He is sure she felt she felt no pain, otherwise she would have cried in pain.
Next he opens her eye lids. Her blue eyes show no sign of discoloration. He unloose the knot of her hair round her neck. Then he kisses her cheek passionately. Her cheek once more blushes brightly under his burning kiss. He then holds up her head, but now it drops on his shoulder. The head seems glad that all its wishes have been fulfilled. The social barriers and marriage ties which forbade her meeting with him is now disappeared. The lover has at last gained her love. But Porphyria could not guess how her earest wish for being united with her lover had been realized in death.
Throughout the night they- the dead and the living – are sitting together and have not stirred. God is so stunned that he has not said a word. Perhaps God’s silence proves that God disapproves the lover’s heinous crime.
Related links:
Robert Browning’s Poetry
Porphyria’s lover introduction
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