Porphyria's Lover

"Porphyria's Lover" is a poem by Robert Browning which was first published as "Porphyria" in the January 1836 issue of Monthly Repository.[1] Browning later republished it in Dramatic Lyrics (1842) paired with "Johannes Agricola in Meditation" under the title "Madhouse Cells". The poem did not receive its definitive title until 1863.

"Porphyria's Lover" is Browning's first ever short dramatic monologue, and also the first of his poems to examine abnormal psychology.[2] Although its initial publication passed nearly unnoticed and received little critical attention in the nineteenth century, the poem is now heavily anthologised and much studied.

In the poem, a man strangles his lover – Porphyria – with her hair; "... and all her hair / In one long yellow string I wound / Three times her little throat around, / And strangled her." Porphyria's lover then talks of the corpse's blue eyes, golden hair, and describes the feelings of perfect happiness the murder gives him and his surprise at God's subsequent silence. Although he winds her hair around her throat three times to throttle her, the woman never cries out. The poem uses a somewhat unusual rhyme scheme: A,B,A,B,B, the final repetition bringing each stanza to a heavy rest.

A possible source for the poem is John Wilson's "Extracts from Gosschen's Diary", a lurid account of a murder published in Blackwood's Magazine in 1818. Browning's friend and fellow poet Bryan Procter acknowledged basing his 1820 "Marcian Colonna" on this source, but added a new detail; after the murder, the killer sits up all night with his victim.[3]

  1. ^ Browning, Robert (2004). Karlin, Daniel (ed.). Selected Poems. Penguin Books. p. 307. ISBN 978-0-140-43726-3.
  2. ^ Browning, Robert (1947). Baker, Joseph E. (ed.). Browning: Pippa Passes and Shorter Poems. New York: The Odyssey Press. p. 89.
  3. ^ Ross, Catherine (January 2002). "Browning's Porphyria's Lover". The Explicator. 60 (2): 68–72. doi:10.1080/00144940209597659. S2CID 161414322.