St. Martin's Summer by Robert Browning
A speaker urges a beloved to keep their love provisional, arguing that past attachments warn against promises of permanence. After a close embrace, the speaker recoils, claiming that the beloved's charm belongs entirely to those former loves.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Dramatic Monologue, Love Poetry · 961 words
First lines
No protesting, dearest! / Hardly kisses even! / Don't we both know how it ends? / How the greenest leaf turns serest, / Bluest outbreak -- blankest heaven, / Lovers -- friends?
You would build a mansion, / I would weave a bower / -- Want the heart for enterprise. / Walls admit of no expansion: / Trellis-work may haply flower / Twice the size.
Genres
- Dramatic Monologue — A speaker addresses a beloved throughout, moving from cautious reasoning about commitment to an abrupt demand for separation.
- Love Poetry — Kisses, embraces and competing wishes for permanence give way to the speaker's claim that remembered loves supply the beloved's attraction.
Tags
past attachments · romantic disillusionment · commitment · dramatic monologue
What this Textopian page supports
St. Martin's Summer is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Browning, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Browning
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Dramatic Monologue, Love Poetry
- Length: 961 words
- Structure: 1 section, 17 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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