As Porphyria enters the cottage she ‘shuts the cold out’, the very presence of Porphyria in the cottage generally brightens the atmosphere and helps the man forget the storm outside. Then Porphyria calls to him, but the man doesn’t immediately answer. ‘When no voice replied’ she started to act provocatively, ‘made her smooth white shoulder bare’.
The poem implies the possibility of Porphyria belonging to another man, that she might have ‘vainer ties’, but when she comes to the lover, she wishes to set her heart’s ‘struggling passion free’. But sometimes that passion would prevail’, and this was a time of that.
Porphyria came ‘through wind and rain’ the man is then overwhelmed with joy, so pleased that the lover now ‘debated what to do’ he eventually decides to kill her when there love is at there strongest and when ‘Porphyria worshipped’ him.
He strangles her with her own hair. He then opens her eyelids ‘as a shut bud’ ‘laughed the blue eyes without a stain’. He refers to the head as ‘glad it has its utmost will’. The ‘utmost will’ could be the will to be with the man forever and all her problems have dispersed in life and they can be together for eternity in death.
‘God has not yet said a word’, because God may feel that since in killing Porphyria the man has granted her utmost desire, that the situation is best left alone.