Friday, March 16, 2012

Who is the speaker in the poem "Meeting at Night"?

I think you might be referring to the poem "Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning, as the poem takes place late at night, when the moon is "large and low."The speaker in the poem is someone who is on their way to meet with someone they love dearly. Initially the narrator appears to be a general, omniscient narrator. However, near the end of the first stanza, the narrator uses the term "I" to refer to their approach to a cove, stating "I gain the cove with pushing prow, / And quench its speed i' the slushy sand." Here it becomes clear that rather than an outside entity observing the scene, the narrator is the one experiencing it, traveling to a specific destination for a specific reason. With this knowledge, we can move forward into the second stanza and understand the narrator's role in the scene. In the second half of the poem, the narrator details their travel across "a mile of warm sea-scented beach" and "[t]hree fields to cross till a farm appears." Finally, the narrator details "[a] tap at the pane," which is the narrator's sign to their significant other than they have arrived, followed by "a voice less loud, thro' it's joys and fears" and ending with "two hearts beating each to each." This poem details the journey that one will go through to reach the person they love. Browning does a great job of putting us in the moment by surrounding his single mention of the first person with very descriptive sensory imagery.

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