Poetry Explication: Meeting at Night

Meeting at Night, a poem by Robert Browning, is a brief poem which recalls a meeting at night between lovers. First and foremost, simply the time of day itself suggests excitement and the forbidden. Shrouded by the dark of night, the narrator is freed to mention his love and to experience it freely through the poem.

Evidently, a great deal of imagery is implicated throughout the poem, in part demonstrating Browning's unsaid assertion that being in love transforms the world into a beautiful thing. As a whole, Browning interlaces warm, fiery imagery with cool, dark images in order to create a mood of the poem which is excited yet quieted at the same time.

The poem commences with "the gray sea and the long black land,"(1), the first of the darker images which imply secrecy in the romance. A yellow half-moon which appears in the second line, large and low like a lantern, reveals the rendez-vous of the lovers warmly, by contrast. The narrator proceeds to personify the "little waves", which leap with a start, a combination of secrecy (for the waves are startled by the presence of the narrator, supposedly) and excitement. The last image that concludes the first stanza indicates that the narrator is willing to trudge through "slushy sand" in order to reach his lover, demonstrating his devotion.

The second stanza is a continuation of alternating images between secrecy and loving excitement, intermingled with indications of the narrator's dedication in crossing "three fields" and "a mile," all to reach his lover. The beach is "warm-scented," while excitement appears with the "tap at the pane," and a "blue spurt" from a match lit by his lover. Line 11 condenses the primary themes of the poem by mentioning the "joys and fears" of the lovers, intermixing the two to define the nature of love. The final line of the poem, telling that their hearts beat together loudly, exemplifies their excitement and nervousness and their passion as well.