Porphyria's Lover Love Quotes

This could be really sweet. After all, Porphyria is "murmuring" softly in the speaker's ear. How romantic! Or it could be that she's still hesitant, and can't bring herself to say it more directly.

The speaker says that Porphyria's "passion" is "struggling" in her heart. She's too "weak" to set it free. Love is getting figured in terms of freedom and restraint again – Porphyria is constrained by something (the "vainer ties" that never get explained) and can't love freely.

The speaker imagines that Porphyria came to his house that night because she couldn't bear the thought of him suffering alone in his love for her.

When love isn't being figured in terms of freedom and restraint, it's described as "worship." Why can't love be equal in this poem? Porphyria worships the speaker (or so he assumes), so he strangles her so that he can idolize her beauty in the same way.

Porphyria has been strangled and reduced to a corpse – a mere object, rather than a thinking individual. The speaker even uses the pronoun "its" to describe her, instead of "her."

The title of the poem is almost – but not quite – uttered in line 56. It's just missing the final "r."