This poem has an element of the confessional about it, as
the narrator, the lover of Porphyria that features in the title, recounts to us what
happened that evening with Porphyria and looks back on his actions. Interestingly the
use of the present perfect tense in the final lines suggests that he is telling us this
actually at the scene, whilst he is still with
Porphyria:
And
thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not
stirred,
And yet God has not said
aword!
Maybe we can imagine
that he is telling this to some officer or detective to explain the murder. Browning
excells in narrative poems that present us with unreliable narrators. By having the
narrator tell what has happened to him and his lover from his perspective we are able to
see the mind of a deranged murderer at work as he expresses that his act of killing
Porphyria was to gain her love eternally:
That moment she was mine, mine,
fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her
hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little
throat around,
And strangled
her.
The speaker above all
desires and craves possession of Porphyria for himself, and finds the way to gain this
by strangling her with her hair, that becomes a "long yellow string" and thus making
sure they are united now with no other forces or powers preventing their
unity.
Thus the significance of the past tense allows us to
analyse the unreliable narrator of this excellent poem and consider his motives and
reasons for his actions.
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