The Last Ride Together

The short poem is the representative of the volume "Men and Women" written by Robert Browning (1812- 1889) - the famous literary figure regarding dramatic monologue. The poem stands for optimism, treatment of spiritualistic love where materialistic love is not seen, or is ignored. The narrator offers his love a last ride with him though he has been rejected by her. The acceptance of the ride gives the narrator various kinds of pleasure .

Treatment of love in the poem

The utterence "Women do not fall in love with philosophers" (S.Richardson in Sir Charles Grandson,vol-3,letter 27) is an apt description of the character of the narrator of Robert Browning's poem 'The Last Ride Together'. In the poem the narrator has been rejected by the lady he loves, but at the same time of the last ride with his beloved he finds every thing, all the pleasures that had been long expected. And he finds these through the channel of spirit, based on deep philosophy. The narrator rather a great philosopher, eternises his platonic kind of love and makes the riding, the time of the riding 'better' where materialism has not been completely rejected.

piritual love

Spiritual love to eternise time comes foremost in this literary art. Here the narrator eternises the moment of riding which is very short in duration : 'The instant made eternity'. Here he loves the moment , the partial time and finds heaven in it; the thing is to note here, that the small time has taken the place of a time of very big duration, meaning the life time of the narrator. Thus the narrator measures time not in quantity but in importance,pleasure of that moment and proves 'Time is the chrysalis of eternity' (Richter)