Robert Browning - Meeting at Night

While we presented this poet's wife - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - earlier this month, we now offer one of Robert Browning's love poems. Known more for dramatic monologues than for poetry during his life, we now know him as being partially responsible for/the subject of his wife's sonnet number 43, included in the "Sonnets from the Portuguese" collection.

Meeting at Night

I

The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed in the slushy sand.

II

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!