Meeting At Night -- Parting At Morning

Author: Robert Browning

MEETING AT NIGHT

The gray 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 i' the slushy sand.

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, through its joys and fears,

Than the two hearts beating each to each!

PARTING AT MORNING

Round the cape of a sudden came the sea,

And the sun looked over the mountain's rim;

And straight was a path of gold for him,

And the need of a world of men for me.

NOTE

These poems were published originally simply as "Night" and "Morning." The second of these love lyrics is somewhat difficult to interpret. If the man is speaking, the "him" in line 3 must refer to the sun. In any case, after the isolation with the woman he loved as described in the first poem, there comes with the morning a sense of the world of action to which the man must return. The two poems are fully discussed in _Poet-Lore_, Volume VII, April, May, June-July. The poems are noteworthy for the fusion of human emotion and natural scenery and for the startlingly specific phrasing of the first quatrain.