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What were the poet's intentions in "Meeting At Night"?
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In "Meeting At Night," Browning's intentions likely include conveying the excitement and intensity of a clandestine love affair. He uses figurative language, such as fire and water imagery, to add depth to the romantic theme, suggesting a tension between passion and its potential quenching. The poem's description of a long, arduous journey to meet a lover emphasizes the narrator's deep commitment and the thrilling anticipation of their secret rendezvous.
It's tough for a reader to know what a poet's intentions were by reading a poem they wrote; we can only really assess what the poet actually achieves, whether or not that is what they meant to achieve. It's possible, though, that Browning was attempting to do more with this poem that to just tell us another love story. It is interesting to note that he uses figurative language to describe "waves" as "fiery" in the first stanza, and then he uses figurative language to describe a "lighted match" as a "blue spurt," which sounds very much like water ("spurt" especially seems to describe a liquid) in the second part. Twice, then, he combines fire with water in the poem, and this is so interesting because water quenches fire; water puts fire out. We often associate fire with passionate romance, don't we? We might talk of a fiery passion or...
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burning love without really giving thought to the figures of speech we're using. If this poem is really just about romance, then why would Browning employ not just one, but two, of these fire/water images?
The poem seems to me to address the early stages of a love. These aren't two old people in a fifty-year relationship, right? They seem to be meeting in secret, late at night, and the level of anticipation and passion seems to betray a newness to this love. Browning's fire/water figures, then, make me wonder if he's actually making a statement about what happens to this fire that we see in the early stages of a romance. Is it eventually quenched by familiarity, by time, by waning passion? Does it become something else? If so, then the fire/water figures would seem to foreshadow the death of this early passion. This is not the most romantic interpretation of the poem, but it is curious that Browning would employ this kind of figure twice in such a short work.
In "Meeting At Night"Browning is seeking to convey the excitement and intensity of a clandestine love affair. He does this most effectively by making us wait for the much-anticipated assignation between the two lovers; building up the intensity as he lushly describes the moonlit landscape. The love between the two beating hearts is perfectly at one with its natural surroundings, rendered in fine romantic detail.
Though a short poem, "Meeting At Night" describes quite a long and arduous journey that the narrator must undertake before he can, at long last, be with his lover. First he needs to row across the sea by moonlight; then he walks a mile along the sand; finally, he hikes across no fewer than three fields before arriving at the farm where his true love awaits his passionate embrace. The length and arduousness of the journey leave us in no doubt that the narrator really is head over heels in love with his paramour and will do anything to be with her.