death will never claim her and in the rhyming couplet he says “so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this and this gives life to thee” which means that as long as people read the poem, she still lives on in its words. The image created is a beautiful woman as beautiful as a summer’s day, who has a glowing complexion like the sun. The poem feels happy and idealising because the writer is expressing how much he is in love and the poem is dealing with a romantic lover and the woman he is describing. The atmosphere seems very warm and romantic.
The Flea is a conceit as the speaker sets out his argument to his lover as to why she should have sex with him. A conceit is an extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs an entire passage and is mainly associated with the metaphysical poets. The Flea is a good example of the metaphysical love poem mode; a technique where the poet takes the least likely image and turns them into symbols for love and romance. The speaker uses different arguments to get the lover to sleep with him.
In the first stanza he uses the metaphor of the flea by saying “how little which thou deny’st me is, it suck’d me first, and now it sucks thee, and in this flea, our two bloods mingled be”. He thinks that she is denying his sex, which is a little thing. In the next line he uses sexual imagery when he says “suck’d” and “sucks” and by saying “and in this flea, our two bloods mingled be” he means that they’ve already had sex inside the flea because in the 17th century the mingling of blood was like having sex.
His lover tries to kill the flea and then he decides to use a religious argument. The speaker talks about their parents grudge “through parents grudge, and you, we’re met” and he wants her to try and rebel against her parents wishes and have sex with him. At the end of the second stanza he says “though use you apt to kill me, let not that, self-murder added be, and sacrilege, three sins in killing three”. The lover has tried to kill the flea and he is saying that in killing the flea, she has killed him, herself and the flea because their blood is in the flea.
At the beginning of the third stanza, the lover has killed the flea and has “purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?”. If the blood of the flea is innocent, then he is also saying that their relationship is innocent. It also shows the woman’s character by squashing the flea she is metaphorically squashing his argument. “Yet thou triumph’st and say’st that thou find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now…”. He says this in reply to what the woman is suggesting, that she has killed the flea and they are no weaker, the speaker’s argument is false. The speaker ends the argument by agreeing with his lover, that killing the flea was easy and hasn’t harmed them-equally as little will happen to her if she has sex with him.
Porphria’s Lover was written by Robert Browning in a dramatic monologue form. A dramatic monologue is a speech or poem by a fictional persona. It’s about a jealous lover who kills Porphyria. “The rain set early in tonight, 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.” In these first five lines pathetic fallacy is used to describe the atmosphere outside while the lover waits for Porphyria’s return. In the last line the lover is expressing his anxiety about Porphyria’s arrival. As soon as Porphyria enters the cottage she “shut out the cold and storm”. She brightens up the cottage and makes it cosy and warm.
In the middle of the poem the lover explains how Porphyria shows her bare shoulder to him and tells him how much she loved him (“Murmuring how she loved me--she Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour, To set its struggling passion free…”). “For love of her, and all in vain: So, she was come through wind and rain.” Porphyria has travelled through the wind and rain to come and see him. “Be sure I looked up at her eyes, Happy and proud; at last I knew, Porphyria worshiped me: surprise, Made my heart swell, and still it grew, While I debated what to do.” The lover finally realised just how much Porphyria loves him-and he starts to think about what to do to her.
“A thing to do, and all her hair In one long yellow string I wound Three times her little throat around, And strangled her.” The lover wants to preserve the happy moment, and kill her before Porphyria can give in to society’s pressures. He kills Porphyria with her hair; he ties it round her neck three times and strangles her. At the end of the poem the speaker says “Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.[…] her cheek once more Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss […]The smiling rosy little head,”. He is describing Porphyria as if she is still alive. He is also trying to convince himself that Porphyria felt no pain and was happy at her point of death. At this point in the poem the lover is in an unstable state of mind. He then rearranges Porphyria’s body into the position it was in earlier in the poem. He says “her darling wish would be heard” which was that the moment they shared would last forever. In the last few lines of the poem “And thus we sit together now, and all night long we have not stirred, And yet God has not said a word!” he begins to think God has sanctioned the murder because he has not reacted to it all night.
The relationships in the poems have been presented differently but are all about love, explored in different ways. They were all written in a patriarchal society and you can tell because in all the poems the men had written about the women and they always had the last say. This was the attitude of a pre-19th century society where women weren’t treated as equals by the men. In The Flea the male has the last word in the argument, Shall I Compare Thee…? The speaker shows patriarchy in the last few lines of the poem. Also, in Porphyria’s lover, Porphyria seems to do all the housework when she arrives at the cottage. These poems are similar but are very different in their own ways.
