Porphyria’s Lover

(Published first in Mr. Fox’s Monthly Repository in 1836, over the signature “Z.” Reprinted as II. “Madhouse Cells,” in Dramatic Lyrics, Bells and Pomegranates , 1842.) In the midst of a storm at night, to a man sitting alone by a burnt-out fire in his room, enters the woman whom he loves, but of whose love he has never been sure in return. She glides in, shuts out the storm, kneels by the dull grate and makes a cheerful blaze, takes off her dripping cloak, lets down her damp hair, sits by his side, speaks to him, puts her arm around him, rests his cheek on her bosom, and murmuring that she loves him, gives herself to him for ever. At last, then, he knows it; his heart swells with joyful surprise, he realises the tremendous wealth of which he is thus suddenly po e ed; and lest change should ever come, lest the wealth should ever be squandered, the po e ion ever be lost, he will kill her that moment: and so, as she reposes there, he winds her beautiful long hair in a cord thrice round her little throat, and she is strangled—painle ly, he knows, but his unalterably, because dead. And God, he says, has watched them as they sat the night through, and He has not said a word! This poem was Browning’s first monologue.