Comparing Poems Porphyria's Lover And The Wind

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Comparing “Porphyria’s Lover” and “The Wind” Robert Browning’s poem “Porphyria’s Lover” and William Morris’ poem “The Wind” are very similar. Both poems are about mentally ill speakers that commit murder. In both poems the speaker is unnamed and only refers to themselves in the first person. Browning and Morris avoid any gender identifiers when referring to the speaker, so the speaker could be either a man or a woman, but it likely the speaker in both poems is male since both of the lovers in the poems are female. Both poems are an inner dramatic monologue where the speakers remember the events that led up to the moment where they killed someone. Both poems use end rhyme. The narrators in both poems are unreliable due to mental illness and…show more content…
It published in 1836 and again in 1842. Browning “Porphyria’s Lover” starts by describing a rainstorm outside of the speaker’s cottage by a lake. “The rain set early in to-night, / The sullen wind was soon awake, / It tore the elm-tops down for spite” (1-3). While the description of a rainstorm outside of a cottage seems like ordinary subject matter for a poem the violent nature that the speaker attributes to the storm through personification in the first five lines foreshadows the violent act of the speaker’s murder. The speaker’s lover in “Porphyria’s Lover” is named Porphyria. The speaker says that Porphyria comes in to the speaker’s cottage from the storm outside. After coming inside the speaker’s cottage Porphyria sits down by the speaker’s side and calls to him, but the speaker doesn’t reply to her. The speaker describes Porphyria as very affectionate towards the speaker. Browning writes that “She [Porphyria] put my [the speaker’s] arm about her waist/ And made her smooth white shoulder bare,” (16-17). In this sensual embrace the speaker looks into Porphyria’s eyes and has a sudden realization that Porphyria worships them. This is the moment that Porphyria’s fate is
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