In Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue “Porphyria’s Lover”, we get a disturbing and unsettling tale of a man who strangles his lover with her own hair. The tone of this tale becomes even more worrying when you take into account the strict, stable meter that underlines the poem creates a weird tension between the murderous act and the way it is presented. The iambic tetrameter that scores the entire prose, breaks form at certain lines throughout the poem, the first break in the form occurs at line five which reveals an insightful message of Browning’s work. At the first reading of the line, ignoring the new emphasis patterns, you take it at face value, the speaker is listening for his lover to enter and his heart is fixed to break in anticipation
