The rain set early in to-night,The sullen wind was soon awake,It tore the elm-tops down for spite,And did its worst to vex the lake:I listened with heart fit to break.When glided in Porphyria; straightShe shut the cold out and the storm,And kneeled and made the cheerless grateBlaze up, and all the cottage warm;Which done, she rose, and from her form 10Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,And laid her soiled gloves by, untiedHer hat and let the damp hair fall,And, last, she sat down by my sideAnd called me. When no voice replied,She put my arm about her waist,And made her smooth white shoulder bare,And all her yellow hair displaced,And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair, 20Murmuring how she loved me—sheToo weak, for all her heart's endeavour,To set its struggling passion freeFrom pride, and vainer ties dissever,And give herself to me for ever.But passion sometimes would prevail,Nor could to-night's gay feast restrainA sudden thought of one so paleFor love of her, and all in vain:So, she was come through wind and rain. 30Be sure I looked up at her eyesHappy and proud; at last I knewPorphyria worshipped me; surpriseMade my heart swell, and still it grewWhile I debated what to do.That moment she was mine, mine, fair,Perfectly pure and good: I foundA thing to do, and all her hairIn one long yellow string I woundThree times her little throat around, 40And strangled her. No pain felt she;I am quite sure she felt no pain.As a shut bud that holds a bee,I warily oped her lids: againLaughed the blue eyes without a stain.And I untightened next the tressAbout her neck; her cheek once moreBlushed bright beneath my burning kiss:I propped her head up as before,Only, this time my shoulder bore 50Her head, which droops upon it still:The smiling rosy little head,So glad it has its utmost will,That all it scorned at once is fled,And I, its love, am gained instead!Porphyria's love: she guessed not howHer darling one wish would be heard.And thus we sit together now,And all night long we have not stirred,And yet God has not said a word! 60NOTES:"Porphyria's Lover" relates how, by strangling Porphyriawith her own yellow hair, the lover seized and preservedthe moment of perfect love when, pure and good, Porphyrialeft the world she could not forego for his sake,and came to him, for once conquered by her love. Alatent misgiving as to his action is intimated in the closingline of the poem.Remarking upon the fact that Browning removed theoriginal title, "Madhouse Cells," which headed this poem,and "Johannes Agricola in Meditation," Mrs. Orr says:"Such a crime might be committed in a momentaryaberration, or even intense excitement of feeling. It ischaracterized here by a matter-of-fact simplicity, which isits sign of madness. The distinction, however, is subtle;and we can easily guess why this and its companion poemdid not retain their title. A madness which is fit fordramatic treatment is not sufficiently removed fromsanity."
(See Edgar's song in "LEAR.")IMy first thought was, he lied in every word,That hoary cripple, with malicious eyeAskance to watch the working of his lieOn mine, and mouth scarce able to affordSuppression of the glee, that pursed and scoredIts edge, at one more victim gained thereby.IIWhat else should he be set for, with his staff?What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnareAll travellers who might find him posted there, 10And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laughWould break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaphFor pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,IIIIf at his counsel I should turn asideInto that ominous tract which, all agreeHides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescinglyI did turn as he pointed: neither prideNor hope rekindling at the end descriedSo much as gladness that some end might be.IVFor, what with my whole world-wide wandering,What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope 20Dwindled into a ghost not fit to copeWith that obstreperous joy success would bring,I hardly tried now to rebuke the springMy heart made, finding failure in its scope.VAs when a sick man very near to deathSeems dead indeed, and feels begin and endThe tears and takes the farewell of each friend,And hears one bid the other go, draw breathFreelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend"); 30VIWhile some discuss if near the other gravesBe room enough for this, and when a daySuits best for carrying the corpse away,With care about the banners, scarves and staves:And still the man hears all, and only cravesHe may not shame such tender love and stay.VIIThus, I had so long suffered in this quest,Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writSo many times among "The Band"—to wit,The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed 40Their steps—that just to fail as they, seemed best,And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?VIIISo, quiet as despair, I turned from him,That hateful cripple, out of his highwayInto the path he pointed. All the dayHad been a dreary one at best, and dimWas settling to its close, yet shot one grimRed leer to see the plain catch its estray.IXFor mark! no sooner was I fairly foundPledged to the plain, after a pace or two, 50Than, pausing to throw backward a last viewO'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.I might go on; nought else remained to do.XSo, on I went. I think I never sawSuch starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:For flowers-as well expect a cedar grove!But cockle, spurge, according to their lawMight propagate their kind, with none to awe,You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove. 60XINo! penury, inertness and grimace,In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "SeeOr shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."XIIIf there pushed any ragged thistle-stalkAbove its mates, the head was chopped; the bentsWere jealous else. What made those holes and rentsIn the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk 70All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walkPashing their life out, with a brute's intents.XIIIAs for the grass, it grew as scant as hairIn leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mudWhich underneath looked kneaded up with blood.One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,Stood stupefied, however he came there:Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!XIVAlive? he might be dead for aught I know,With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain, 80And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;I never saw a brute I hated so;He must be wicked to deserve such pain.XVI shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.As a man calls for wine before he fights,I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.Think first, fight afterwards—the soldier's art:One taste of the old time sets all to rights. 90XVINot it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening faceBeneath its garniture of curly gold,Dear fellow, till I almost felt him foldAn arm in mine to fix me to the placeThat way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.XVIIGiles then, the soul of honour—there he standsFrank as ten years ago when knighted first.What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.Good-=but the scene shifts—faugh! what hangman hands 100Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bandsRead it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!XVIIIBetter this present than a past like that;Back therefore to my darkening path again!No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.Will the night send a howlet or a bat?I asked: when something on the dismal flatCame to arrest my thoughts and change their train.XIXA sudden little river crossed my pathAs unexpected as a serpent comes. 110No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;This, as it frothed by, might have been a bathFor the fiend's glowing hoof—to see the wrathOf its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.XXSo petty yet so spiteful! All along,Low scrubby alders kneeled down over itDrenched willows flung them headlong in a fitOf mute despair, a suicidal throng:The river which had done them all the wrong,Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. 120XXIWhich, while I forded,—good saints, how I fearedTo set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seekFor hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!—It may have been a water-rat I speared,But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.XXIIGlad was I when I reached the other bank.Now for a better country. Vain presage!Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—XXIIIThe fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,None out of it. Mad brewage set to workTheir brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the TurkPits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.XXIVAnd more than that—a furlong on—why, there!What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, 140Or brake, not wheel—that harrow fit to reelMen's bodies out like silk? with all the airOf Tophet's tool, on earth left unawareOr brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.XXVThen came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earthDesperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,Makes a thing and then mars it, till his moodChanges and off he goes!) within a rood—Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth. 150XXVINow blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,Now patches where some leanness of the soil'sBroke into moss or substances like boils;Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in himLike a distorted mouth that splits its rimGaping at death, and dies while it recoils.XXVIIAnd just as far as ever from the end!Nought in the distance but the evening, noughtTo point my footstep further! At the thoughtA great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend, 160Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-pennedThat brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.XXVIIIFor, looking up, aware I somehow grew,'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given placeAll round to mountains—with such name to graceMere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.How thus they had surprised me,—solve it, you!How to get from them was no clearer case.XXIXYet half I seemed to recognize some trickOf mischief happened to me, God knows when— 170In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,Progress this way. When, in the very nickOf giving up, one time more, came a clickAs when a trap shuts—you're inside the den!XXXBurningly it came on me all at once,This was the place! those two hills on the rightCrouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,After a life spent training for the sight! 180XXXIWhat in the midst lay but the Tower itself?The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,Built of brown stone, without a counterpartIn the whole world. The tempest's mocking elfPoints to the shipman thus the unseen shelfHe strikes on, only when the timbers start.XXXIINot see? because of night perhaps?—why, dayCame back again for that! before it left,The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, 190Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—"Now stab and end the creature—to the heft!"XXXIIINot hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolledIncreasing like a bell. Names in my earsOf all the lost adventurers my peers,—How such a one was strong, and such was bold,And such was fortunate, yet each of oldLost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.XXXIVThere they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, metTo view the last of me, a living frame 200For one more picture! in a sheet of flameI saw them and I knew them all. And yetDauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."NOTES:"Childe Roland" symbolizes the conquest of despair by fealtyto the ideal. Browning emphatically disclaimed any preciseallegorical intention in this poem. He acknowledgedonly an ideal purport in which the significance of thewhole, as suggesting a vision of life and the saving powerof constancy, had its due place. Certain picturesquematerials which had made their impressions on the poet'smind contributed towards the building up of this realisticfantasy: a tower he saw in the Carrara Mountains; apainting which caught his eye later in Paris; the figure ofa horse in the tapestry in his own drawing-room—weldedtogether with the remembrance of the line cited fromKing Lear, iii. 4, 187, which last, it should be remembered,has a background of ballads and legend cyclesof which a man like Browning was not unaware. Forallegorical schemes of the Poem see Nettleship's "Essaysand Thoughts," and The Critic, Apr. 24, 1886; for anantidote to these, The Critic, May 8, 1886; an orthodoxview, Poet-lore, Nov. 1890: for interpretations touchingon the ballad sources, London Browning Society Papers,part iii. p. 21, and Poet-lore, Aug.-Sept. 1892.