A person will do anything and everything in their power to make one moment last as long as they possibly can. In the poem Porphyry’s Lover, the narrator kills Porphyry because he wants to preserve the perfect moment between them and feels as if he has granted Porphyry’s one wish. He so desperately wants to live forever in the moment with his darling Porphyry that he transforms room her lover into her insane murderer.
In the beginning of the poem Porphyry’s Lover, the narrator is just that, Porphyry’s lover. The narrator and Porphyry have a relationship that is kept secret between only those two, but evidence in the poem proves that they are both comfortable and dedicated to it. In the text, it Says that porphyry “shut the cold out and the storm” (7). This shows that she was dedicated to the relationship by bracing the freezing cold and a storm that was so bad that the poem states “it tore the elm-tops down for spite, and did its worse to vex the aka” (3-4).
She would not have traveled through a storm to be with someone that she suspected of being crazy. The narrator also tells us in the poem that Porphyry was “murmuring how she loved me” (21). This proves that they were not just simply involved, but were in love. The poem shows that Porphyry was comfortable with the narrator by stating “she put my arm about her waist” (16). If Porphyry had suspected her lover of being psychotic, she would not have made him put his arm around her or showed much affection toward him at all.
Had the narrator been strange throughout their entire relationship, Porphyry would not have acted the way she did. Not only is there evidence to support that they are comfortable in their relationship, but the text also suggests that the narrator slowly started to realize that Porphyry would someday give in to the standards of society which sparked his thoughts on ways to save their relationship. The poem says that “passion sometimes would prevail a sudden thought of one so pale” (26-28).
This shows that once he recognized that she would end the legislation at some point due to it not living up to society s standards, he realized that the only way to preserve the perfect moment between them was to kill her. The poem says that his heart grew while he was still trying to figure out what to do and then he “found a thing to do and strangled her” (37-41 ). When he says he found a thing to do, it proves that he did not come there with the intention of killing her because he did not bring a murder weapon.
He realized that he needed to preserve the perfect moment and seed what was available. He was slowly devolving into a psychotic killer while thinking that he was merely doing what he needed to protect his relationship. After the narrator kills porphyry, he says that he loosened her hair around her neck and “her cheek once more blushed bright beneath my burning kiss” (4748). This proves that he was delusional and believed that she was still alive, as though nothing had happened.
The poem also states that “she guessed not how her darling one wish would be heard,” which suggests that e thinks that she had one last request that only he could fulfill (56-57). The last three lines state “and thus we sit together now, and all night long we have not stirred, and yet God has not said a word,” which shows us that he has been sitting all night with a dead body and still thinks he has done nothing wrong because God has yet to say anything to him (58-60). At the end of the poem, the narrator has transformed from Porphyry’s lover into Porphyry’s deranged killer.
Sometimes people will go to great lengths to preserve something they Hirsh. Sometimes they will go so far that they transform into a whole new person while doing so. Porphyry never feared that her lover would harm her in any way. He never planned to kill her until he realized there was no other way to save the moment for forever. He turned into an insane killer while trying to preserve that moment and their love. Sometimes fascination and love will make you crazy.
