Porphyria's Lover

The violence done to Porphyria is foreshadowed in the description of the tumultuous weather. As the speaker sits in his cold home, he describes the scene outside. Like the wind, he, too, is “sullen” (Line 2), due to a “heart fit to break” (Line 5). In describing the wind, the speaker notes it “soon awake[s]” (Line 2) in anger, much as the speaker’s interior rage bursts forth after Porphyria’s declaration of her passion. As the storm progresses, the action of the wind becomes destructive as it rips branches off the trees out of “spite” (Line 3) and does “its worst to vex the lake” (Line 4). By personifying the wind’s violent actions, giving it emotional reasons for doing what it does, the speaker hints at his own sublimated feelings, suggesting they, too, are spiteful and vexed. In this way, the speaker who seemingly commits a spontaneous, horrible act might have had murderous thoughts prior to the event. The winds tearing the “elm-tops down” (Line 3) is equivalent to the speaker’s brutal murder of Porphyria by wringing her neck with her own hair. The final tableau of the couple quietly sitting together suggests the eerie calm after the storm, in which the damage and debris is left behind.