Porphyria's lover

Porphyria’s lover.

How is the story told?

The poem ‘Porphyria’s lover’ is in my interpretation is a story about a young man who is in love with a women but for one reason or another they cannot be together, maybe because of a difference in social class so to make sure they can always be together the author kills her however at points in the poem I feel maybe the reason for the women’s death may be blamed on the authors struggle for dominance.

The story begins with a storm this could be to foreshadow the evil that is about to come as he describes the storm with negative connotations such as ‘sullen’ and ‘spite’. However when Porphyria enters the room the writer changes from writing in a negative way to quite a positive way for instance using words like ‘warm’ and ‘glided’ which is quite an angelic word. He also uses strong imagery to portray Porphyria allowing you to fall in love with her character and pureness but he also makes her seem quite dominating when the autho uses imperitive verbs against her like 'out' and 'made'. In line 21 the use of the hyphen suggests a pause of disbelief almost as if he cannot believe that she does love him.

Between lines 17 – 20 the word ‘and’ is repeated four times this may mean that he is so excited in the trail of events that he just has more and more to say however on line 36 he repeats mine twice which could suggest that he is very possessive and the repetition of ‘no pain’ may mean that he is trying to reconcile himself with this fact and may make him believe that he did no wrong.

The rhythm of this piece is in iambic tetrameter but in places this pattern is broken and this could be to represent the fact that this is a broken love story which could also be why it has not been written in iambic pentameter like most love poems/sonnets.