"Meeting at Night" by Robert Browning
One of the things I love about poetry is its power to convey deep feeling through the use of imagery. Robert Browning’s poem, “Meeting at Night,” is a perfect example of how poetry can wield that power. In “Meeting at Night,” Browning describes what the speaker sees as he goes to his sweetheart’s house in the middle of the night to meet her. It describes nature, but it is about love.
I recommend that you read Browning’s words first, then my paraphrased version of the poem. Then, read Browning’s version again.
In the first stanza, the speaker looks at the moon hanging above the ocean as he beaches his little boat in a cove. Then, in the second stanza, he walks across the beach. He then walks across some fields, until he arrives at a farm. He taps on the window of the farmhouse, a match is lit, and there is a whisper. The speaker says that the voice is quieter than the sound of their two beating hearts—“the two hearts beating each to each.”
The simplicity of this poem is part of its beauty. Somehow, merely through the description of what the speaker is seeing, Browning conveys a true human experience—the beauty and excitement of being in love. There is a sense of eagerness throughout the poem—the speaker notices the “startled waves that leap,” and then mentally goes through the plan of his journey to make tryst with his sweetheart—I just have to cross this beach, then three fields, then I’m there!
And, the heartbeat. Oh, the heartbeat. Have we lived until we have had the experience of worrying if our sweetheart can hear our beating heart? The description of two hearts beating “each to each,” and being louder than a whisper… I can’t stand the perfection.
Sometimes, the beauty of a poem comes from its simplicity. By describing almost exclusively the setting of just a part of a story, Browning faithfully conveys the painfully thrilling feeling of being in love.