Robert Browning Meeting At Night

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Essay-Examine Robert Browning’s poem “Meeting at Night”. Discuss the poet’s use of imagery, diction, structure and theme, and how they contribute to our understanding of the nature of his feelings. Intense romantic love often leads to taking risks without thinking about the possible consequences. In the poem, “Meeting at Night,” Robert Browning effectively illustrates the deep affection one feels when in love, and by portraying the hardships and the reward of an assignation, he vividly conveys to us the length to which one can go in order to meet the love and to satisfy one’s desire and passion. He emotes these feelings in a way which demonstrates his mastery of the English language, and expresses the nature of his feelings about the theme of intense love and its effect on human behaviour by bringing together diction, imagery, and structure. Browning uses dark imagery effectively to portray his journey as laborious and dangerous, and establishes an ominous atmosphere. In the first stanza, this atmosphere is introduced by his images of the “grey sea” and the “long black land” which the poet observes. Such colours as “grey” and “black” are dark and bleak colours, immediately evoking a sense of unease in the reader. The description of the land as “long” outlines the fact that the journey is a long one, and in doing so reflects the poet’s intense love for his loved one, who is presumably Elizabeth Barrett, and the extent to which Browning goes in order to meet with her and satisfy the passion which they mutually experience for each other. Browning also describes the image of the “yellow half-moon”, revealing that the journey is at night, at that this is part of the assignation which he and Barrett will be involved in. The “half-moon” also has relevance to the fact that it lights the way and guides the poet to his beloved, and may be a metaphoric representation of

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